AS a group of players, we were all very shocked by the Adrian Shankar news.

We don’t know many details of what has happened but it all came as quite a surprise and now there is a police investigation into the matter.

He seemed to fit into the dressing room reasonably well, but we all have to move on and concentrate on the cricket.

The Friends Life t20 gets under way on Friday and hopefully I will be fit enough for the first match at Lancashire Lightning.

The lads had a few warm-up games last week and it was good to see them get some wins under their belts — albeit against lesser opposition.

But it means, hopefully, we can take some momentum into the competition.

Alexei Kervezee’s century against Scotland was unbelievable. He struck the ball sweetly from the very first delivery and that isn’t easy to do.

Alexei would be the first to admit that he has struggled a little in Twenty20 cricket so hopefully his innings against Scotland will give him a boost.

There are four teams who progress from both groups to the quarter-finals and that has got to be our aim.

We have recruited well in the overseas department with Saeed Ajmal coming over and Shakib Al Hasan returning.

Spin bowling has become a very important part of Twenty20 cricket so hopefully we can utilise that with the team we will put out.

We also have some very big hitters in the team. You have all seen Gareth Andrew play with his Mongoose and, with Vikram Solanki and Moeen Ali, there aren’t many better opening pairings in the country.

I was quite close to playing in the LV= County Championship Division One match with Nottinghamshire which is currently going on at New Road.

I failed a fitness test over the weekend.

I’m struggling a little playing off the back foot and the fielding drills I attempted did not go too well.

So it was felt that it was better to have six batsmen who were 100 per cent fit.

Had this game been two or three days later then I might have had more of a chance of playing.

But the lads did well to bowl the champions out for 223 although, if we are being brutally honest, we have bowled slightly better this season.

Then we made a good start with the bat. Vik was timing the ball superbly as he made 52, while Matt Pardoe played an equally important role at the other end.

He blunted the new ball and is so very hard to get out.

Unfortunately, there was a lot of rain yesterday but hopefully we will get there and press home our advantage.