IF I’m being honest, we were pretty ordinary in the first-half of our Clydesdale Bank40 defeat to Essex at New Road.

The bowlers, particularly the seamers, were poor and didn’t execute the deliveries they wanted to.

Up front, we didn’t take wickets and then, at the death, we didn’t get the ball in the blockhole — exactly the same as in the Friends Life t20 quarter-final defeat at Yorkshire last week.

It cost us again as Essex scored a lot of runs in the last five overs. Ryan ten Doeschate’s 24-ball half-century ultimately made the difference, but we didn’t help ourselves in the field — that was probably the worst we’ve fielded for a long time.

Dropped catches are always costly and we were just a bit lacklustre really. There were a lot of fumbles, some poor throws and it was an all-round poor performance in the field.

We prepared as we do for all games and had a lot of fielding practice, but unfortunately we just didn’t deliver, which was desperately disappointing. However, that disappointment will give us a rocket for our next game.

The weather forecast and the groundsman’s radar said there would be rain about on Sunday, which was why I chose to field first when I won the toss, especially after having been beaten by the Duckworth-Lewis method already this season.

But the toss did not make much difference to the outcome — we were beaten by a better team on the day and if we bowl and field like that, we won’t win too many games.

There have been a lot of positives in our CB40 campaign — particularly at the start when we won three out of the first six games before the t20 started.

We were unlucky with a couple of the defeats too so things could have been different.

Phil Hughes was brilliant again and just needed someone to bat with him — if he or Gaz Andrew had been there at the end, we might have sneaked the win.

Generally, we batted pretty well — I thought 240 was slightly above-par on that pitch.

Aneesh Kapil probably doesn’t need a confidence boost as he’s cheeky enough already, but he played fantastically in our tour match against the South Africans.

He showed his talent and why he’s held in such high regard by myself and everyone here — we all know how good he can be and hopefully we’ll see that next year when he’s with us full-time again.

He is off on England Under 19s duty now, so we won’t see much more of him this year which is a shame for us, but we wish him all the best and it will now be a great experience for him in Australia.

Chris Russell impressed too and was close to being in the first XI squad to go to Hove for the LV= County Championship clash with Sussex which starts tomorrow.

But, if he goes back to the seconds this week and bowls like he did against the South Africans, he’ll pick up a hatful of wickets and will certainly be in contention for the next game.

Hove is always a tough place to go and we can take a lot of confidence out of the way we competed with South Africa over two days.