THE STEVE RHODES COLUMN

WHEN you are playing on a good wicket that is going to spin, like the one at The Oval last week, you really want to win the toss, so to lose it was a big disappointment.

We bowled pretty well though and kept them to three-and-a-half an over, which was a good effort by our bowlers.

But Mark Ramprakash played really well for his hundred and he is always difficult to get out.

To limp past the follow-on total nine wickets down and then go on to win like we did is quite a rare thing to happen, but we made sure we approached the final day in positive fashion.

The two captains, Vikram Solanki and Mark Butcher, agreed to try to go for a result and we thought we would be set around 300 off 62 overs.

We were under pressure from the weather and Butcher set us 285 from 65 overs, but he knew the weather would not allow us all of those overs.

Then our openers, Phil Jaques and Stephen Moore, just went out there and blitzed everything.

Even though we had to come off for rain, we thought we were in a great position -- we had two guys who were in, going well and still had 10 wickets in the shed -- but we didn't think we'd be off for 29 overs.

When we got back on after the rain, we needed to score at eight-and-a-half to nine an over but that was the rate the openers had been going at before the break so we were quite confident.

I think Butcher missed a trick there though because he had all of his fielders on the fence, which allowed our batsmen to knock around the singles and steal the odd two here and there.

Then when a boundary did come along, it really took the pressure off.

As it was getting nervous towards the end, Ray Price was really unlucky.

He hit a four, then went for another big hit and really hit it out of the screws, but it went straight at their 12th man, who was a superb fielder, and he took a great catch.

Luckily for us, Zaheer Khan was in no mood to hang around and hit the first ball he faced for six to win the game.

As soon as the ball was in the air we were all celebrating because we knew it was going for six.

There were tremendous celebrations in the dressing room afterwards too. It was a great win for team morale because we really believed in ourselves.

Jaques, our overseas signing, showed a lot of confidence in his first appearance for the club and hopefully that confidence will spread through to the other players.

He looks an even better player this year than he did with Yorkshire last year -- he has now got a real swagger and confidence about his game.

Graeme Hick is celebrating his 40th birthday today and to be playing first class cricket at 40 is a fantastic achievement.

He keeps himself very fit though, so it is no surprise to me, but it is still a remarkable achievement.

Hopefully, he will celebrate his birthday by scoring plenty of runs against Glamorgan at New Road.