It was very disappointing to suffer two defeats last week to Kent, in the County Championship, and Sussex, in the Friends Provident Trophy semi-finals.

So it's really important we bounce back with a successful Cheltenham Festival, which gets under way on Sunday.

Derbyshire and Northants are our two Championship opponents at Cheltneham and two teams we feel capable of beating. Indeed, we've already beaten Northants at Northampton this year.

I thought the Kent side that beat us at Beckenham last week we're easily the best team we've come up against in the Championship this season. Eight or nine of their players are international cricketers and they are a very strong side.

It was a tight game until a last-wicket stand of 87 between Ryan McLaren and Simon Cook took the game away from us. Even so, we played some good cricket in patches and can take confidence from our performance in the game.

Despite the defeat, we are still top of the Division Two table and it's important we consolidate that position with a good Cheltenham Festival.

The next two games will take us past the halfway point in our four-day campaign and a good draw and a win, or even two wins, would put us in the box-seat going into the run in.

Everyone looks forward to playing at Cheltenham, mainly because of the type of cricket you get there. It's a fast-scoring ground, with short boundaries square of the wicket and a quick outfield. You also get good crowds at Cheltenham and players always enjoy playing in front a decent-sized crowd.

Every year I hear talk about the fast and bouncy pitches at Cheltenham. But, to be honest, that's not been my experience of playing at Cheltenham – and I've been playing there 15 years.

It might have been the case in the 1980s when Courtney Walsh and Syd Lawrence were charging in, but it's not like that now.

The pitches are very good ones to bat on and the spinners come into it late in the game. If you bat well, you will score big runs because it is a fast-scoring ground. If you bowl well, the ball does swing and that suits our attack.

Our Championship record has not been very good at Cheltenham over the past decade and that's something we want to start putting right.

I think we've now got the bowling attack to do that, with good pace and spin options. Whether we go into the games with two spinners remains to be seen, but Derbyshire are maybe struggling a bit in the spin department and we may have the advantage over them in that area.

Northants, on the other hand, have better spin options in Monty Panesar, if he's not away with England, and Nicky Boje.

As well as the Championship games, we'll also be taking on Worcestershire, Essex and Durham in the Pro40 at Cheltenham.

We've got a great one-day record at the College Ground and to start the competition with three home games gives us a great opportunity to get off to a flyer.

The last two seasons we've been near the top of the Pro40 early on and that's basically because we've done well in our games at Cheltenham.

It's a massive advantage for us to play these games at the College Ground, because we know the angles of the ground and where's best to hit the ball.

This, of course, is the last year of the Pro40 and I've always thought it's a nice competition.

I can see the argument for getting rid of it as they want domestic cricket to be in line with international cricket by playing 50-over matches rather than 40-over ones. And with two Twenty20 competitions lined up for next year, there was never going to be room for the Pro40 as well.

But, personally, I think two Twenty20 competitions is one too many. I'm pretty sure what's happened is that the ECB has been bullied into a second Twenty20 competition so that they can enter two teams in the Champions League.

The Indian Board seems to be dominating our domestic board, who I think should stand up and be stronger. But money talks and the Indian Board seems to have most of that at the moment.

Finally, a quick reflection on our defeat to Sussex last Sunday. At the halfway stage of the game, we definitely felt we could successfully chase down their total of 326-7.

We had scored 306-9 in a group match at Hove, so 20 more, with the outfield as quick as it was, was very gettable.

Alex (Gidman) played fantastically well for his hundred and the decision to give him out caught behind was probably the turning point in the game. But that can happen in cricket. Sometimes those decisons go for you and sometimes they don't.

It was a shame because another five to 10 overs of him batting with James (Franklin) would, I think, have won us the game. We had got the chase down to 78 off 10 overs, with six wickets left, and we'd normally expect to finish the job from there.

Earlier, I felt we had done well in the closing overs to pull Sussex back to 326 when we had been staring down the barrel at 350-plus. Unfortunately, we let them get away a little bit early on, when myself and James Franklin were perhaps guilty of bowling a few freebies.

INTERVIEW: MARK EASTERBROOK