Mike Burns reflects on his first month as Somerset skipper

With the 2003 cricket season just over a month old, Somerset's new captain Mike Burns gave a simple summing up of his first few weeks in the `hot seat'

This morning after completing his preparations for tomorrows championship match against Glamorgan at the County Ground he told me: "We are playing well in the county championship, we had a great win in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy, but we could do better, and we will do better in the white ball game."

He continued: "In the championship we played well against Gloucestershire in Bristol and felt unlucky to go down by just eight runs in the end. We played well at home to beat Durham, and then we were beaten by the weather at Derby after playing ourselves into a winning position."

"Our overall championship form has been good, especially our bowlers who have performed very well indeed, and our batting is just starting to come together," he went on.

"We also had a great result in the Cheltenham and Gloucester trophy last week in Scotland where we bowled and fielded well, and then Marcus just did the rest," he said.

But on his own admission the teams performances in the National Cricket League, where the Sabres have lost all three of their opening matches has not been so good. "Our form in the white ball competition has been disappointing. We suffered with the weather in our game here against Durham Dynamos, at Derby we went for too many runs at the death and then after losing Marcus early on we almost clawed our way back into the game, then against Scotland it was a bit of a freak result."

Regarding the defeat at the hands of the Saltires he added: "The conditions were difficult with a strong cross wind, but we should have got more runs, and would have had we known from the start that the game was going to be reduced to sixteen overs, but I'm not reading too much into that result."

"We have got a strong squad of players and what we have to do now is to take the confidence that we have got playing with the red ball and use it in the forty five over game."

What have been the high spots of the season so far I asked. "I guess the first win against Durham was the most pleasing, especially after going down so narrowly against Gloucestershire. Peter Bowler and James Bryant batted well to get us there, but if things had gone our way then we could so easily have won all three of our championship matches."

"Our bowling has been magnificent all season, Richard Johnson is a high class bowler, Nixon McLean has bowled well without much luck and they have been very well supported by Simon Francis, whilst our batting is just starting to come together. Jamie Cox played well at Derby, in fact everybody has played their part."

"Our newcomers have also done well for us like Aaron Laraman who batted for a long time in difficult conditions against Dominic Cork in a stand with `Coxy' at Derby, whilst it was never going to be easy for James Bryant to adapt to our conditions but he did well here against Durham, and he has put in some good fielding displays as well," he said.

What did he feel about being skipper so far I asked. "I'm really enjoying being captain of Somerset, The worst thing about the job is not being able to select everybody because we have so many good players to choose from. My game has been a bit disjointed, and I haven't really batted a lot but it's been OK."

What was he looking forward to over the next few weeks. "We will be looking to push on and get some more victories under our belts to help us towards promotion, and we will do better in the white ball game," he told me.