IT WAS fantastic to beat league leaders Essex in front of a packed crowd at Cheltenham, writes Chris Dent.

The boys were really pleased to be able to finish our last home T20 Blast game on a high.

We have had some good results lately and even the games we have lost – like against Surrey on Friday – have been really close.

If a couple of small things had gone our way we might still be in the mix for the quarter finals.

From a personal point of view it was great to make a contribution that helped us win the Essex game.

I felt I owed it to the team a bit. They have kept backing me even though I haven’t scored the runs I would like to and it was nice to repay the faith that has been shown in me.

When I came in my plan was to keep hitting towards the short boundary but to start with I just wanted to get going which is something I haven’t managed to do in this tournament. Once I had faced a few balls I felt confident enough to start targeting that short boundary and luckily it came off.

It is a small ground at Cheltenham, with short boundaries and that makes for really exciting cricket. The crowd is really close to the pitch and there was a really good atmosphere for both games.

I guess for quite a lot of people it is their only chance to see live cricket during the year and they seem to get into it even more than at some of the other grounds we play at.

Our next limited overs game at Cheltenham is our first match of the new Royal London One-Day Cup competition against Northants on Sunday (July 27).

Although it is 50-over cricket I don’t think it will be like international matches where the first 40 overs of an innings are often irrelevant. I think it will be more like an extension of the Yorkshire Bank 40-over competition where sides go for it from the outset and we should see some really high scores.

We haven’t had a chance to sit down as a squad and discuss our individual roles and plans for the competition yet but we will do so before Sunday’s match. I think with the squad we have we will probably be better suited to the slightly longer format and it is a competition we can do really well in.