Steve Kirby showed in our Friends Provident Trophy quarter-final win over Nottinghamshire that he is one of the best bowlers in the country.

He is bowling very well this season and Geoff Miller, the England chairman of selectors, has watched him a few times.

I'm not sure there's an opening for a pace bowler in England's Test team at the moment, but I'd say Steve deserves to be considered for the one-day side.

The ball nibbled about off the pitch a bit early on and Steve and myself managed to get a few wickets and get us off to a dream start.

The pitch was next to the one which was used for the one-day international last month and the block of wickets in that area have good pace and bounce in them.

One of the main factors in our win over Notts was the way the senior players stood up and put in performances.

We had to do without two key all-rounders in Alex Gidman, who had a back problem, and James Franklin, who was still with New Zealand at the World Twenty20.

But I was impressed with the way Craig (Spearman) captained the side in Alex's absence. He was very clear in how he wanted the game to pan out and it pretty much went the way he planned.

We bowled and fielded very well and to dismiss a strong side like Notts for 189 was a fantastic effort.

We knew Notts would try and attack our fifth and sixth bowlers, but David Brown and Chris Taylor both did a good job.

I was also impressed with the way Ian Saxelby and Vikram Banerjee bowled as our first and second-change bowlers.

It was a big day for Sax. He was bowling against his old county and that can be quite a nerve-wracking thing to do.

We asked him to bowl nice and straight and to give the batsmen no chance to free their arms. He did that very well and only went for 29 runs in eight overs.

I think it was a smart move by him to leave Notts and come and play for us.

I was talking to him about it the other day and he reckoned he was quite a way down the pecking order at Notts.

Sometimes you have to move on to get more first-team cricket and it's worked out well for him so far at Gloucestershire.

Banners has come on leaps and bounds in one-day cricket this season. He is not a massive spinner of the ball, but he has learned how to vary his pace in one-day cricket and picked up the wicket of an international cricketer in Samit Patel on Tuesday.

Notts looked as if they might still get around 230 when Chris Read and Mark Ealham were putting together a good partnership.

But Kirbs bowled a hostile first over when he came back into the attack, and I followed his lead in the next over, when I managed to get Ealham out.

Notts then took their power-play, made a couple of errors during it and were soon all out. Andre Adams connected with a few that I bowled at him, but I got him out and I thought their total was about 70 or 80 under par. Now we can look forward to playing Sussex in the semi-finals and the possibility of getting through to a Lord's final is, of course, an exciting one.

Some of us at Gloucestershire have experienced a Lord's final before and would love to do so again, and those that haven't will be hoping to sample what is always a great occasion.

We know Sussex will be hard to beat, but we did well against them in the group stages and will go there with confidence.

Our focus at the moment, though, is on continuing the momentum we've built up in the Championship with a good performance against Middlesex.

It's great to have James Franklin back in the side and, hopefully, we can consolidate our position at the top with a win.

Finally, a quick word on the World Twenty20. As I said before the tournament, I feared England did not have the power-hitters to reach the final.

But it was a shame they didn't progress to the semi-finals, because anything can happen once you get to that stage.

I thought England bowled and fielded very well, but were too reliant on Kevin Pietersen and Ravi Bopara when they batted.

It would have been nice to see what Graham Napier could have done at some stage and I thought it a bit strange he didn't get a chance, not even in the warm-up matches.

Paul Collingwood and Owais Shah are good one-day cricketers, but didn't perform quite as well as they can and the middle part of the innings was a problem for England.

We don't seem to have a guy who can come in during that period and hit sixes straight away, like some of the other teams do. Even Dimitri Mascarenhas tends to take time to get going.

We need to find someone capable of doing that, otherwise we'll have to keep restricting sides to 130-140 and that's a big ask of the bowlers.

INTERVIEW: Mark Easterbrook