Alex Lees column

ADIL Rashid was outstanding yet again in taking five wickets in our one-day Cup win over Hampshire on Thursday.

We bowled and fielded superbly to bowl them out for 172, and Adil was superbly backed up by our seamers, particularly Jack Brooks.

He was almost unplayable. But the funny thing was that speaking to him after the game, he said that he's probably bowled better than that this year without getting the wickets.

Hampshire was one of those nights when he got his rewards.

Hampshire left a few players out for that game because they could not qualify and had Twenty20 Finals Day a couple of days later. But, relatively speaking, the inexperience came from their bowling attack.

The main players in their team were batsmen, and they had a couple of young bowlers either on debut or playing in their second match.

I know a few of the lads have commented on this over the last week or so, but we haven't played our best cricket at Headingley. The pitches there for one-day cricket have been hard work, there's no hiding away from that.

But we know what they're about now after maybe taking a couple of games to get used to that.

Durham haven't played on one of our 50-over pitches, so I guess that might be a bit of an advantage for us heading into Thursday's quarter-final.

Anything over 250 is a competitive total. If we can get over that, maybe around 270, with our bowling attack, we've got a very good chance.

Having said that, we'd also be confident of chasing because we've done that well too in a few matches.

There will have been a bit of a break for us before we head into the last month of the season. We've had a few days away from cricket, and we'll come back into training on Tuesday ready to go again.

We've played some really good cricket and worked hard all year. Now we're getting down to the nitty gritty, we're all excited about grasping the opportunities that come our way.