THE STEVE RHODES COLUMN

JUNE has been a really pleasing month's cricket for us and we have played very positively throughout.

Even in the drawn game at Bristol we had the better of the match. The spirit in the dressing room is as good as it has been for a long time and all of the players are enjoying each others' successes.

It was very difficult for Lou Vincent to come in and re-place Phil Jaques, whose record for Worcestershire so far is impeccable, but he started brilliantly against York-shire.

The pressure was really on him to perform and he played his usual attacking game, which is just what we want him to do.

Our innings against York-shire went exactly to plan. We scored quickly in the first 15 overs, built partnerships thr-ough the middle and then finished it off with some good work from Graeme Hick and Steve Davies. In fact, to finish on 270-4 was about 40 runs better than we had planned before the game.

Ray Price did a great job with the ball and his figures only got damaged at the end when he was trying to buy a wicket.

Gareth Batty was also very good and he put huge pressure on the Yorkshire batsmen from his very first over. Ray and Gareth's bowling gave us the option to bowl Vikram for a few overs and he also bowled really well. We knew that as soon as he got his injured finger right he would be a useful addition to our attack.

In our last County Champion-ship game, I think Northants came into the match quite negatively. I think they came into it looking for a draw.

They only had four main bowlers and left spinner Jason Brown on the sidelines and he is a regular performer.

I think they would have needed five bowlers if they wanted to win the game and they were on the back foot from day one.

Once again we went about getting a big score on the board -- which included Hicky's 100th hundred --before doing what we have been doing well recently, taking 20 wickets.

It has been a pleasure for me to watch nearly all of Gra-eme's Worcestershire hundreds.

He is an important cog in the Worcestershire make- up and I think with the way he is playing at the moment, providing he keeps scoring runs and his fitness remains, he can play a part in next season's campaign too.

With the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy, I said before the season that there should have been at least quarter-finals in the competition. I don't think having 20 teams battling it out for two places is good for English cricket.

There needs to be more to play for, because some teams felt inclined to field weakened teams and save their players for the Twenty20 and the Championship once they were out of the running for the C&G.

There needs to be more to play for.

There will be semi-finals in the C&G next year, which is an improvement, but for me there needs to be at least a quarter-final stage too.