WE had a bit of a bail-out last weekend because we didn’t perform very well down at Cornwall and were lucky that the Unicorns Knockout Trophy game was abandoned.

Luke De Souza started well and Tom Morton was going well early on but all of a sudden, we went from 90-odd for two to 140 all out.

I don’t know what it is at the moment, but the spinners just seemed to cause us a lot of problems on a wicket that was only slightly damp.

We just can’t seem to bat 50 overs and that’s a cardinal sin.

We’ve got players that are out of form at the moment and that needs to change as soon as possible.

We were then really lucky that the game was brought to an end after about six-and-a-half overs of their innings.

They were scoring at a rate that would have been enough to beat us on Duckworth-Lewis and if we’d played three more overs, that would have been enough for a result.

We’ve only got one more game in the competition and we’re now waiting on other results to go our way if we want to progress out of the group stage.

Devon and Cornwall have to play each other next weekend and Wales and Dorset are also playing next weekend.

If things do go our way, we’ve still got to play Devon ourselves (on May 17) and that’s a tough game because they’re last year’s champions, but we’ll keep an eye on things and see if we’ve got a chance.

You really need to try and win your first game to have the best chance of going through and we didn’t do that because we lost to Wales. We did beat Dorset but there’s still work to do and it’s not in our hands.

We could have been out of the competition already if things had been different at Cornwall though.

The league season has started now and we’ll always be keeping an eye on how players are doing.

Luke De Souza is an example - he’s hit three tons already this season and that’s why he’s been in the team.

Players now have the chance to play themselves into form and force their way into the team.

The Championship starts in June and we’ve got a Twenty20 tournament down at Exmouth on May 31.

It’s a new competition and it gives us another chance to get some practice in before the four-day matches begin.