Lewis: Hopefully James Franklin will come back and boost our line-up
As I've mentioned many times this year, James gives the side good balance with his ability to bat at six as well as being a frontline pace bowler.
That's been reflected in his four-day stats, where he's got 30-odd wickets, including a five-for against Kent on Wednesday, and scored nearly 800 runs.
He gives us lots of options to play with and in one-day cricket he can bat up the order and hit the ball hard.
He's been a really good signing for us, so I'm hopeful Gloucestershire can come to an agreement with him and that New Zealand Cricket will let him come back.
I must admit I find it very surprising he's not in the New Zealand squad at the moment.
He's played a lot of international cricket in the past and has got some good skills. But if he doesn't play for New Zealand, hopefully he can return here next year and do really well for us.
It's been good to have an overseas player who has been around all year, which is not something we've had for a few seasons. It gives a fluidity to the team and makes for consistency in selection.
Reflecting on our four-day season, the inconsistency of our batting has obviously been a problem.
Of course, there's still a chance we can get promotion if we win our final game of the campaign, against Kent.
But the way the other games are shaping up, the Northants one in particular, I have to admit that our prospects are not looking too good.
We've only really got ourselves to blame, because there have been too many games where we've not performed well enough with the bat.
We've ended up taking three points from four or five games, which leaves you a long way short. Even if we had taken two, three or four batting points out of each of those games, we'd have been very much ahead of the second-placed team (Essex) going into our game with Kent
We'd have been in control of our own destiny. Unfortunately, we're not and that's why we are relying on others not to win this week. That said, there's definitely been a big improvement in our four-day cricket on last year. We've won five games and if we can kick on again this winter and make our squad better, we'll be in a good position to challenge next season.
The pace bowling unit has been a big positive for us this year. We've now got six seamers who are very capable of playing anywhere, at any time.
In Anthony Ireland, Gemaal Hussain and Ian Saxelby, we've got guys who complement myself and Kirbs (Steve Kirby). One day, we'll be out the door and they'll be the lead guys.
That's the way of sport. The older you get the closer you get to retirement and it's good to see younger guys coming through and providing competition for places.
As regards our one-day cricket, it's hard to put a finger on why we had such an up and down season.
We obviously did very well to reach the semi-finals of the Friends Provident Trophy, but our Twenty20 campaign was disappointing, and the same can be said of our Pro40 season, which ends with a game at Trent Bridge on Sunday.
I think one of the reasons has been that we've not played spin very well in one-day cricket this year. That's an area we'll be working on this winter.
We'll be looking at how we play the spinners in the middle of the innings. Down at Sussex, for example, we collapsed a little bit to their spin bowling in the Friends Provident Trophy semi-final, and in Twenty20 we played the middle part of the game poorly.
I think if you looked at our power-play performances, they would be up near the top across the board. We've been very good early on in games, but unfortunately our mid-game has struggled a bit.
Also, there are some skills we need to work on with the ball. Our 'death' skills and our general skills of bowling in one-day cricket are something we need to improve.
But we've got a great knowledge and a great resource in (director of cricket) John Bracewell and I think, this winter, the guys will be working very hard to make themselves into better cricketers.
Comment on this story