IT was great to see three Worcestershire players in the England Lions squad to face Australia at New Road next month.

To see Vikram Solanki back in the side is especially pleasing.

We all know Vik played in the first Indian Cricket League tournament and, since then, he hasn’t played for any of the England sides.

Now it seems those players who have participated in the ICL are being brought back to the international fold.

Hopefully this call back into the Lions squad will be the start of big things for him.

Obviously Stephen Moore and Steve Davies have been around the squad for a while now, so it is good to see that the selectors have kept them in.

There was also news about Davo’s future in the past week. I want him to be part of any team that I play for — he is a wonderful cricketer.

He is a private man with a massive future and I hope that he is given time to make his mind up.

It has not been the best of weeks for Simon Jones. It was a tough blow for him to be ruled out for the rest of the summer, but I truly believe he will be back stronger than ever.

The surgeon who is looking after Jonesy has handled some high-profile sporting stars in the past — including the likes of Lawrence Dallaglio — and he is pleased with how the knee is.

The cartilage in Simon’s knee is in good nick, he just needs a bit more time to recover and by sitting out this summer he will be back stronger.

We head to Taunton tonight as we return to Twenty20 Cup action to face Somerset Sabres. Both teams are in the hunt in our group for the quarter-finals and the wicket down there usually produces a lot of runs.

With the four remaining games being played this week getting into the last eight will be a massive boost for us. We have played some good cricket in this competition so far, but the nature of Twenty20 is that anyone can beat anyone.

We cannot afford to have many slip ups if we are to get into the quarter-finals.

In the Championship against Yorkshire last week, we managed to get a solid draw.

I know that it wasn’t an exciting spectacle for the people watching, but we have stopped our losing run.

People may think that when we had Yorkshire at 108-5 that we should have done better, but it was not as simple as that.

The wicket was a good batting one and, taking nothing away from our bowlers, the Yorkshire top order played some indifferent shots.

We have to take the positives out that game. We got full batting points and we didn’t lose.

When you look at how we started the season — getting drilled inside three days — this was a solid display.