LAST week s nine-wicket County Championship defeat against leaders Gloucestershire at Bristol was a wake-up call for all of us. If I am brutally honest we were outplayed in all departments. The only shining light was the performance of David Burton, who t

LAST week's nine-wicket County Championship defeat against leaders Gloucestershire at Bristol was a wake-up call for all of us.

If I am brutally honest we were outplayed in all departments. The only shining light was the performance of David Burton, who took five wickets against his old club on his Championship debut.

It was a fairly disappointing result. We did not do ourselves justice, particularly with the team we had out. We had a couple of soft dismissals and could have applied ourselves a bit more.

It was a good toss to win and Gloucestershire had the best of the conditions. Perhaps in our first innings of 153 you could blame the conditions. But in the second (233) there were no excuses.

Yet, it is not all doom and gloom. Although we are second from bottom with no wins from five games we are still only 16 points off second-placed Surrey, who we play at Lord's next Tuesday.

And if we can do to them - collect 20 points - what Gloucestershire did to us we will be right back on track.

But make no mistake the defeat and, indeed the manner of the defeat, was a wake up call for us. We were all full strength batting-wise - and included our England captain Andrew Strauss.

We will now lose Straussy for the Ashes Series and possibly Owais Shah and Eoin Morgan later in the summer.

But it is also a chance for someone like Billy Godleman to come in and stake a claim.

We have been playing good cricket and this was a bad performance. We can afford one bad performance a season - and hopefully this was it. As far as the players are concerned it is already forgotten - yesterday's news.

This week we started our next batch of Twenty20 Cup matches - five in all - and although we have little chance to qualifying for the knock-out stages after the abysmal showing in the first phase we want to restore a bit of pride for ourselves in the competition.

We are the defending champions after all and we want to make sure we are playing in the first division of the Twenty20 next season.

Personally, I'm delighted to be back playing the matches this week. It will be a bit strange for me having missed most of them through injury last season.

But my fitness is improving all the time. I'm playing with a smile on my face.

Once again I bowled well against Gloucestershire - beating the bat several times - but without reward. And I carried the bat for an unbeaten 26 in the second innings.

One Surrey player who will be relishing his return to Lord's is Mark Ramprakash. Ramps just loves batting - and like every player, it seems, is determined to play well at the home of cricket.

He was a stalwart for Middlesex during his time here but he probably still feels he still has a point to prove.

Yet, it is also a great challenge for our players, particularly the younger ones.

They will learn so much playing against someone like Ramps. But hopefully he won't be around too long because once he gets set he tends to hand around for a long time.

Chris Silverwood was talking to sports editor Patrick Mooney.