I THOUGHT our chance of au-tomatic promotion had gone after Saturday's defeat to Surrey in the Pro 40 League but what happened is typical of the ups and downs of sport.

We were pretty gutted at the end of that game because we felt we had done a lot of hard work and it just hadn't come off.

We didn't expect Somerset to beat Surrey on Sunday but that is the beauty of sport.

You never know when the underdogs are going to pull off a win like that and you can never be sure of the outcome until the final ball is bowled.

It is very good for the club to win automatic promotion to division one. It's one of the things we set out to do at the start of the year.

We have achieved that and now we are looking to double up in the four-day game and we need to beat Northamp-tonshire if we are to force the hand of Essex in the race for promotion into division one of the County Championship.

Going back to the performance against Surrey, Ben Smith and Vikram Solanki batted really well.

It was always going to be tough at the end and we needed one of those guys to stay in until the end.

Ben and Vikram had a really good stand in the middle of the innings and Vikram was very disappointed to get out when he did and leave the way open for Surrey to get back into the match.

Mistakes that players make when they seem to be well set can be down to a lack of concentration or it can be down to the pressure exerted by the opposition.

On Saturday, it was the quality of the bowling rather than a case of the batsman making a huge error.

The win against Hampshire at the Rose Bowl last Wednes-day night was a really good one for us.

We read the weather well and we knew that we would have two bites of the cherry if we bowled them out.

We got our innings cracking and we knew we would be sitting pretty under the Duck-worth-Lewis method if the rain came, which it did.

It was a terrific bowling performance and everything went to plan from our point of view.

Reflecting on the Pro40 League this season, there are so many teams challenging for promotion and relegation and that can only be a good thing.

My only reservation is that you don't play everybody home and away.

My view would be to amalgamate the two one-day leagues into one competition and play each team home and away.