After a break of about five weeks since returning from Ireland it’s time to get back to cricket and I’m feeling refreshed and looking forward to the challenges ahead.

I was also married on June 8 in St. Kitts to Tenielle, which was a lovely occasion and I’m also in the process of purchasing a new house, which will be useful for when we start a family some time down the line. I’ve also played a fair few rounds of golf.

A decent break always does you good. There’s a full year of cricket coming up right through to the end of September on our UK tour next year so this may be the last chance we get of a good break for a while. 

I haven’t picked a bat up for a while but on Sunday we start practice before we go to Zimbabwe for three 50-over matches. We don’t have any indoor facilities in the winter, but I’ve never been one to hit balls indoors because it’s too easy.

The Zimbabwe trip is going to be a useful exercise before we host the Twenty20 World Cup. When we go to Zimbabwe if we can manage to take a 2-0 lead I really think we should go for the world record in the third match. Why not? We have to challenge ourselves. Why be content with 300 or 350 when we know we are capable of 400 plus. There’s no reason why we can’t do it again.

As far as the Twenty20 goes we will be taking it very seriously. It’s wide open as the main World Cup was.

The weather could play a big part in this tournament, especially for the matches held in Cape Town. Johannesburg games should be unaffected while Durban may also be affected in the evenings, if the rain comes. We’re only at he beginning of Spring so we don’t know what weather we are going to get.

This is the first World Cup of its kind so I’m not sure what scores we should expect to be making. After the first few games we will see what the conditions are like and what scores are generally winning totals.

A lot of the time 180 to 200 is a good score but I have a feeling that scores much less than that could be winning totals, purely because of the conditions. I suppose the toss could also be important in some of these games, especially at Cape Town because of the weather.

As far as my game goes I’m quite confident as I averaged almost 60 at the World Cup in the Caribbean and it would be nice to carry on in that same sort of form. I always like playing on the big stage.

I think batsmen should be looking for a strike rate of about 170; if you can manage that you would be doing quite well. I have a feeling that a strike rate of a flat 100 won’t be enough and will be a bit slow at games unaffected by the weather.
 
But whatever happens it should be exciting for everyone. The players, the supporters and everyone involved with the tournament.

To read about Herschelle and Tenielle's wedding click here