IT is always a sad day when one of your colleagues retires and Matt Mason has been a great servant to Worcestershire over the years.

During his 10 years at the club, Mase has got pretty good statistics to show what a fine career he has had — he’s taken more than 300 first-class wickets in just over 100 matches.

It has been tough for him this season because of injury.

He has been working so hard in the gym to get himself right.

But when he was bowling in the Sri Lanka match he just felt the time had come to call it a day.

Not many players go on until they are 37 and it has been a privilege to have been able to play alongside him.

With Mase retiring, another of our veteran bowlers, Alan Richardson, has signed a new contract.

Big Al has been a phenomenal signing for us over the 18 months that he has been here — he’s got 94 wickets in 22 games, so it’s great that he’ll be here for another year.

He bowled, along with Shakib Al Hasan, superbly against Hampshire in the LV= County Championship and finished with nine wickets — he’s a captain’s dream.

That win over Hampshire last week was excellent and set up by Vikram Solanki’s 173.

There is a belief we can stay up in Division One this season but we know it is still going to be tough.

However, the first win over Nottinghamshire was very important as we had been playing some good cricket in the matches before that.

We had chances to win four of the six games prior to that Notts win and took that success into our Friends Life t20 campaign and the Hampshire contest.

It has been going pretty well for us in the Twenty20 too.

It has been bitterly disappointing that three of the home matches have been rained off but the 41-run win over Yorkshire on Sunday was superb.

Moeen Ali got us off to a flying start in the first six overs before Alexei Kervezee and Jimmy Cameron shared a good partnership which helped us reach 183-7.

Then Shakib’s four wickets helped us bowl them out for 142.

It was frustrating that we played so well against Yorkshire on the Sunday having been well below-par at Leicestershire the previous day.

We’ve got a big week in the t20, starting with Northamptonshire Steelbacks tomorrow.

We want to keep pushing for a place in the quarter-finals.

It would be nice if we could secure a home tie but if you offered me a third or fourth spot finish now, I’d take it.

Aside from the championship and t20 matches we’ve played over the last week, we also entertained Sri Lanka.

Their total of 351 was always going to be a tough ask to chase down.

Although we lost, it was a great game of cricket and Mo’s 136 was an unbelievable knock.

Saeed Ajmal had a fantastic start for us, taking two wickets with his first three balls.