IT IS back to the county championship this week for the first time since the win over Hampshire in the Royal London One-Day Cup and we are hoping to keep our good form going, writes Will Tavare.

We are still ambitious about the four-day competition with the aim of finishing third.

Hopefully the confidence from winning the one-day quarter final will filter across into the four-day game.

It has been fantastic to get to the semis and we would love to go another step and get to a Lord’s final.

We’ve had a lot of close one-day matches this year and against Leicestershire when it came down to the last ball I was really nervous on the sidelines. But against Hampshire I felt really relaxed. Even when Michael Klinger got out I never once thought we weren’t going to win and it was the same for the other guys in the dressing room and shows how confident we all are at the moment.

A few of us played poker around Pete Handscomb's house the other day which also shows how close we all are as a group.

Sax (former Glos bowler Ian Saxelby) won that game but Denty (Chris Dent) is pretty good too. I am shocking but occasionally manage to fluke a hand.

We spend a lot of time together off the field, we play a lot of golf and go out for dinner together and it shows how tight the squad is.

We’ve all played together for a long time – I’ve played with Denty since we were 12 or 13, Jack (Taylor) and Payney (David Payne) since we were 15. We are all good mates and it is starting to rub off on the pitch.

The fact that we all get on so well has made it much easier for me taking over as captain in the county championship.

Perhaps because I’ve not played a huge amount of first class cricket, I like the bowlers to take charge of their own fielding positions.

The fact that I am good mates with them means I trust what they do and I think that has paid dividends and makes it quite easy taking over.

Hopefully, we can get a win over Leicestershire this week and then we can look forward to the challenge of the semi-final against Yorkshire on Sunday.