Calne's Hampshire all-rounder on life as a professional cricketer

It’s never nice to lose an important game of cricket in three days but Durham out-classed us in all departments last week.

They are county champions for a reason and beat us by an innings and 110 runs, having bowled us out for 105 and then 96.

I actually don’t think we bowled too badly in the game in removing them for 311 but Steve Harmison and Graham Onions were too much for us.

It wasn’t a bad wicket and while it had a little bit in it for the seamers I just think they executed their game plans better than we did.

I didn’t get a bowl at all in the game, which didn’t surprise me too much to be honest. I probably won’t bowl as much in four day cricket as I do in one day games and Twenty20, which is something I understand and am fine with.

Unfortunately I got a golden duck in the first innings but there was not a lot I could do about it. When the first ball you face is an off-stump yorker that can happen and it’s one of those things. But thankfully we got another good result before that when we beat Essex quite comfortably at the Rose Bowl last Thursday.

Our opener Michael Lumb played a fantastic innings to make 124 from 69 balls. I’m pleased for him because he had a difficult time at the start of the season but he’s really hitting form again.

He’s an awesome player to watch when he gets going and you know he’s always capable of pulling something like that out of the bag.

We’ve won four out of six in our group and are in a good position so if we can keep that going we’re only a couple of games away from the quarter-finals and even finals day.

I did manage to catch a bit of England’s Twenty20 World Cup loss to Holland in the hotel on Friday evening.

More often than not you should be able to beat teams like Holland but we made it through the groups in the end and hopefully we can go on to have a good run.

We begin a four day game at home to Nottingham today and that is massive for us.

We spoke before the Durham match about how these three games, with Lancashire next, could make or break our season in that league.

They’re all challenging and we’ve had a bad start but it’s crucial we now get two good results.