It’s simple, we have to peak at the right time

Our Northants player columnist looks ahead with relish to the T20 Blast finals day

What a huge week for Northamptonshire CCC. A quarter-final in the Royal London One Day Cup against Surrey and the NatWest T20 Finals Day on Saturday.

Before I get onto this, I have to talk about my close friend Rob Newton’s incredible double hundred this week.

Under pressure and in the last year of his contract, Newts played as responsibly as I have ever seen him and completely dominated the Leicestershire bowlers in a match-saving effort.

Having grown up with him throughout our academy days, Newts is one of the most talented sportsmen I have ever played with, but also one of the unluckiest.

His last few years have been ravaged by injury meaning he has never managed to string a run of games together. I hope now that this is the start of a new era for him where he can become a mainstay of our line-up.

By the time this is published we will know our fate in the Royal London One Day Cup. Surrey teams always come with a swagger and we have had some heated battles in the past. I can’t wait for this one!

Preparation for this week has been no different to any other week apart from some added recovery and rehabilitation schemes.We had a Championship match starting on the Saturday, a day off on Wednesday, the quarter-final on Thursday and Finals Day looms tomorrow.

Anybody that plays sport realises that this is not ideal preparation for the biggest day in our domestic calendar, but that’s just the way it is – we play more than we practise.

Players have had to work on white-ball skills whenever they can, in between sessions, early mornings or after the day’s play. Structured, organised team sessions have been hard to complete as we try to balance the work load of all our players. Our medical team have put us through the pain of cryotherapy with the aim of speeding up muscle recovery and sleep patterns.

We will complete this on Wednesday and Friday mornings.

As we set off for Edgbaston on Friday morning there will be some excited players on the bus. Finals Day is the best day in our domestic set-up and a day everyone wants to play in.We will train on Friday afternoon at Edgbaston, do some media duties before we head back to the hotel for a team meeting to discuss tactics.

It’s then over to each individual player to decide what he wants to do with his evening to get himself in the right frame of mind to play the next day.

This will be my fourth experience of finals day – I have won a final, lost a final and lost a semi. It is an emotional roller-coaster, but a day where you have to put all emotions aside and concentrate on performing. All the hard work means nothing if you cannot perform when it counts.

I’ll be urging my team to stay calm, smile and enjoy it as I know we have the players and talent to win it. It’s all about playing our best cricket when it counts. This is the nature of big games in any sport.

Let’s hope that next time I write it’s us who have achieved this!