Ravi Bopara heaves another six during his 201 for Essex © Getty Images

Results have not been going our way of late but we can take some comfort in the fact that we have reached the semi-final of the Friends Provident Trophy following our recent win at Grace Road.

That victory was dominated by Ravi Bopara who produced a very special knock to finish with 201 not out. Ravi’s been our stand-out player this season and I’m delighted that England are now playing him at No.4 in their ODI team. That’s where his strength is.

At Grace Road he came in at a very difficult time, after we lost a couple of quick wickets, but he seemed to strike the ball extremely well from the start. Everyone who witnessed his performance saw a very special innings that day. It was nice to see the umpires, opposition and home crowd giving an away player the type of recognition that Ravi got at the end.

I spent a lot of the innings at the end so got a perfect view of Ravi’s display – helping him to add a record fifth-wicket stand for Essex in the competition (190). When I came to the crease we were four down with not many on the board so it was important that I stayed with Ravi. My job was to pick up singles to make sure he got as much of the strike as possible while hitting any bad balls that came along.

I was pleased with the way I played – particularly against Claude Henderson, who is a very canny performer. It was crucial that I kept Ravi company for a long period because we didn’t want to expose the lower order to Henderson and their other spinner Jeremy Snape.

Now we go on to play Yorkshire in the semi-final and it will be very exciting to be on a cricket field with Darren Gough again – the first time since he left us. Darren was a huge influence on our side during the three years he was here and made a lot of friends. Having got to know him as a team-mate there is certain to be a lot of banter flying around on the day but, most importantly, he is an extremely good player so we need to be aware of what he can do. Their gain was certainly our loss when Darren joined them. Yorkshire have a lot of strength-in-depth but we’ve put in some good performances in the Friends Provident Trophy so can go into the game with every confidence.

And so to the Twenty20 Cup.

It’s been an interesting start to the tournament for myself as I’ve taken on the extra responsibility of captaincy. Mark Pettini took a knock in a vital area during our four-dayer at Lord’s and was in a fair bit of pain after that. Unfortunately he took another blow in our opening Twenty20 Cup match at the Oval and he’s been struggling ever since. We wish him a speedy recovery.

As a result I’ve taken up the mantle and have thoroughly enjoyed it. Twenty20 cricket is probably not the ideal start for a captain, as everything is quite rushed, but I’ve had good support from our experienced players. While Mark is laid low I’ll be doing the job for the foreseeable future so hopefully I can the team back into the winning habit.

Performing so well in our opening match at The Oval meant our subsequent two defeats against Middlesex were even more disappointing. Credit to Middlesex as they are a powerful Twenty20 unit with a lot of strength in areas where they can hurt you. One of their main plusses is the spin duo of Murali Kartik and Shaun Udal who are fine one-day bowlers and put a little of pressure on you as a batsman.

After those defeats it’s important to get back to winning ways at Sussex and at home to Kent to get some more momentum.

Off-the-field there has been little time for ‘fun and giggles’ behind the scenes of late because everything has been so hectic in terms of our schedule. No doubt a few wins will put the smiles back on our faces!

	Will Smith pulls during his century against Durham. 'It was a huge effort and one of my most satisfying days in cricket' © Getty Images

According to the average eloquent football pundit, a week is a long time in football. Without doubt the same astute statement can be applied to cricket, and in our case it is not just one week, but the last two, that have felt like an eternity.

Durham supporters of a weak disposition would have been well advised to steer clear of any one of the last four games – two Championship games, one Friends Provident Trophy quarter-final and the first Twenty20 Cup match.

When I signed off my last blog, and amid much abuse from Gareth Breese for calling him pint-sized, I had failed to mention anything about the upcoming Championship game against defending champions Sussex – a tricky encounter anytime, but at ‘Fortress Hove’ it took on greater significance.

Having dismissed Sussex for a meagre 214, an eventful last 10 overs of the day was not needed. 10 for 3 – bugger. When it turned into 11 for 4 in the first few overs of the second morning, it looked as if the bowlers’ fantastic efforts would go unrewarded. At the fall of the fourth wicket, the classy but luckless Neil McKenzie, out strode perhaps the most assured number six in county cricket – Dale Benkenstein – usually at number five but relegated one place due to the use of a night-watchman.

However, 205 runs later and Benks was adjudged lbw to a Mushtaq Ahmed skidder, and little old me was still standing at the non-striker’s end. We were only a handful of runs away from a record partnership for Durham’s fifth wicket. I cannot tell you how proud I would have been to be part of such a record, but even still it was a huge effort and one of my most satisfying days in cricket. That I got out soon after annoyed me as I needed to assume responsibility and take the game far beyond Sussex’s reach. As it was, thanks to a great last-wicket stand between Harmison brothers, we had a valuable lead of 87.

The third innings of the game would turn out to be crucial – chasing anything less than 200 and we would be very confident. Now, if Sussex’s second innings had been acted out in the theatre, then it would have had two lead parts. Perhaps there would have been a small bit part for our unassuming, but highly skilled, seamer Callum Thorp (who took four crucial wickets) but the rest of us were mere spectators.

It was Matt Prior against Stephen Harmison. Prior scored 133 from 138 balls out of a team total of 212, and played the innings that will be very difficult to usurp as the best I’ve seen, given the circumstances and opposition. And Harmy was Harmy - as whole-hearted, gutsy and potent as he always is, blasting out four Sussex wickets, including an amazing hat-trick with the first three balls of a new spell. If this middle session of the third day was not of a world-class international standard then I don’t know what is. It is clear that we must have a serious England team if these two guys can’t get a look in.

A nervy chase was avoided and we became the first team to beat Sussex at Hove since 2004. It’s safe to say that the few beers we enjoyed, followed by the late night fish and chips on the sea-front, were fully deserved!

As soon as we had stepped off the coach back from Brighton, our thoughts turned unerringly to the Friends Provident quarter-final against Nottinghamshire. Again we came up against a great solo innings, from Samit Patel, and certainly without his bludgeoning we would have had to chase far less than 188. The score is 127 for 1, with 20 overs remaining, and were we cruising. In fact, we cruised all the way to 189 for 9 with one over remaining! Nerves were shredded, grown men were reduced nearly to tears and the relief was palpable. Nottinghamshire’s nemesis was once again the pint-sized off-spinner Gareth Breese. He had defied them last year in a similar stage of the competition and yet again he won the game with a priceless 34 not out.

At the non-striker’s end was Mark ‘Bob’ Davies, a funny man at the best of times. His actions during what turned out to be the last ball of the game however, had me in stitches for minutes. Six runs were needed off seven balls, and Breesey was on strike. Would he try and snatch a single and retain the strike for the last over – the safe option, but as the field had been brought up there were chances for a boundary.

Bob had presumably not thought it all through. As Breesey hot-stepped down the wicket to Darren Pattinson’s last ball and proceeded to swing through the line, Bob’s first reaction was one of self-preservation as he virtually ducked to the floor in fear of being struck by the thunderbolt. Once he had realised that he was safe, and that the ball was soaring over the infield, I swear you could see a comic strip light bulb burst out above his head… ‘Hang about, this is going all the way for six. I best check the scoreboard.’… So with the ball halfway to boundary, 30 feet in the air, Bob picks himself up after ducking, turns his head, has a quick look at the scoreboard, and thinks to himself… ‘Six to win…stone me, we’ve won!’… It dawned on him, and quick as a flash he sprinted over to Breesey and gave him the sort of bear-hug that should only be reserved for behind closed doors. What makes it all the more hilarious is, that amid all this confusion and comedy at Bob’s end, Breesey was in no doubt and was stood arms aloft as soon as he had struck the match-winning blow. It was a golden moment.

The next heart-stopping match in the series was the Championship game against Hampshire. I am aware that I have waffled on so won’t elaborate too much on this one. Plus we lost! The main feature was another Herculean effort from Harmy, with both bat and ball, that could not quite snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

And so to Twenty20. No drama to speak of here. Just the usual rain-reduced seven-over chase, mid-innings collapse, left-arm spinning hat-trick and pitch-black finish. All in a day’s work for Durham at the moment.

If my heart stands up to this emotional torment, then I will report on our Twenty20 campaign in the next few weeks. Just thinking, my heart best stand up to it…there’s US$5m dollars to be won!

	Gary Kirsten: emotional intelligence as a batsman © Getty Images

As a cricketer one can have a lot of down-time. The moments actually spent executing a skill, whether it be diving for a ball in the outfield or cracking a shot through the off side, is something that can be measured in milliseconds.

Unless you are in the middle, you can be sitting on the balcony; making a cup of red bush tea (the so-called healthy non-caffeine type), or talking trivialities with a team-mate. In such periods, it is fascinating how the mind can wander, especially if one's form is poor. The extended period of time and energy not being expended out in the middle can lead to over-analysis and introspection, a tendency I developed too often in the early part of my career.

In what is becoming an ever more complex and technological age there is an increasing emphasis on analysis of players, opposition and the inner workings of one's own team. It's come to the point where I've begun to wonder what England's post-war players would have made of such an experience. Take my grandfather, Denis Compton, for instance. He was the David Beckham of his era, yet he often needed reminding what time a Test match actually started!

In his day, he and his team-mates would play golf on their days off to maintain fitness and nurture their competitive instincts. Today's regime involves bleep tests, measurement of skin folds, and computer analysis alongside technical practice sessions on specially-designed ball machines, for both fielding and batting. My grandfather is alleged on occasions to have missed the start of play, yet still made a hundred in someone else's kit and while using the No. 11's bat! What would he have made of life as a professional cricketer in the new millennium?

The modern professional arrives at first-class games on the eve of the match, participates in lengthy team meetings, highlighting opposition strengths and weaknesses with the use of computer-generated data to back up strategic points designed to enhance the team's education of the battle ahead.

And yet, has the modern player become too technically minded? My own journey has mirrored this, and in questioning the best way forward for me personally, I have gone through a period of exploring alternatives. Finding the mental courage to free oneself up, and play with joie de vivre when the match intensity is at its greatest, is a paradox for all players seeking new peaks in performance.

One aspect that I've found increasingly interesting, is the balance between technical intelligence (ie knowledge of one's batting style on a physical level) and emotional intelligence (ie the ability to manage one's emotions). That old cliché, that batting is 90% mental and 10% technical has been repeated in many an article on the psychology of the game, but how true is this statement, and just what is meant by "the mental game"?

Take Andrew Strauss's Man-of-the-Match innings recently at Old Trafford, which won the second Test for England against New Zealand. For me, that innings was more about mastery of emotion than perfect technique. Strauss is leaving more balls outside the off stump and not searching for runs like he was 12 months ago. But is that as much a technical advance as it is an emotional one? He appears to have a calmness about him which is in contrast to his demeanour at the crease in the previous 12 months.

As cricketers, we hit hundreds if not thousands of balls on the bowling machine while refining what we hope will be the perfect technique, and how often have I seen batsmen after getting bowled, (and I definitely include myself in this category) walking straight to Cricstat (the program where we can watch our innings ball by ball) to check if their shoulders were sideways on or whether their front foot landed in the right place.

The problem is that in preparation we all want to achieve something tangible, something we can both see and feel at the same time. But this, in my experience, can create changes which can be cosmetic. I’m beginning to understand that real change must come from within in order to achieve consistency of thought, which can then lead to consistency of behaviour. Practicing behaviour is less tangible. It requires a patience and dedication. It is not something that can be seen by the naked eye.

We've all watched Johnny Wilkinson go through his routine when he takes his place kicks. Those cupped hands, the view of the seam drawing a line through the centre of the posts, and a dead aim through the middle before he fires his leg up and allows the rest to happen. The truth is it's no different each time; he repeats his routine whether in a club game, a training session or a world cup final. This is what he does. I'm sure it would be quite easy for him or anyone else to place the ball down and think to hell with all that visualisation, making myself calm stuff - I'm just going to put the ball down and kick it. It can be easy to become complacent in one's routines but I suppose what I'm learning is that behavioural consistency takes a lot of patience, a lot of time and certainly a lot of practice.

I was fortunate to spend some time with the ex-South African opening batsmen and current India head coach Gary Kirsten last winter, in Cape Town. Gary was a player not particularly noted for his elegance or natural ability, but he was a top international batsmen and someone who prided himself on maximising his strengths and working with what he “was given” on any particular day. His biggest message to me was to rid myself of ego. It's far more important to be willing to accept and work with what one has on any day than to tell yourself: this is how I should be playing and how I want to play.

He told me to take expectation out of the equation and go with: “'Let's just see how I play today”. By spending more time with acceptance, I soon realised that in fact it's okay that things aren't going the way I would like. The irony is the more time you spend being displeased with your current performance the longer it's going to take for it to improve. So be accepting of how it is in the present, be kind to yourself and it won't be a surprise that as your ability to control your emotions increases, so will your performance.

I'll never forget one particular day. First he asked me: “Compo – how do you define playing well?”

I answered confidently: 'Timing the ball well, feeling at ease and dominating.”

His response astonished me. “Really? Well do you want to know what playing well is for me? It's about scoring runs irrelevant of how well or badly it comes off the bat.”

He described an occasion during South Africa’s tour of England in 2003, the series in which Graeme Smith scored consecutive double centuries.

During the fourth Test at Headingley, Andrew Flintoff was bowling very quick and Gary told me there were times when he was genuinely scared. He even admitted that he feared that if a single one of the short-ball barrage he faced that morning had been smack on target, it might have been the end of his career. After two-and-a-quarter hours in that first session he managed just 13 runs. "It was simply a matter of survival," he told me.

Kirsten, that day, didn't fight the fact that he couldn't score a run; he didn't tell himself: “I'm a good square cutter”, or, “'I know I'm good off my legs so if it's there for me I'm going to have a go”. Instead he looked deep into himself and said: “No I don't feel good today. I'm just going to stay with this as long as I can.”

As it happened he came out after lunch, hit one in the middle, and suddenly he felt in complete control. Gary stayed with his discomfort. He even became comfortable with feeling uncomfortable. He remained in the dark tunnel a long time, but through the dogged single-mindedness that was always his trademark, he emerged out the other end, with a brilliant 130 that rescued his side from 21 for 4, and won the match for South Africa.

His story is a great lesson in acceptance – for any cricketer to adapt and embrace the demands of any given day and always to make the most of what that day brings.

How often do you go out to bat and feel like a dog? How often do you fight it to the point where batting is no fun? These days I’m trying to steer away from judgement, because it's only your ego that judges you and builds unwarranted expectation. When I observe the leading players, I see that the honest players – the ones most true to themselves – are invariably the ones with the soundest work ethic. The ones with the soundest work ethic are invariably more consistent. They seem clear-minded; content; and appear to be at greater peace with themselves.

The key for me has been in understanding the important part emotion plays in performance. In doing so, I am re-discovering the “fun” element in the challenge between bat and ball after years of obsessively pursuing an unrealistic objective of “'the perfect technique”', and getting too caught up in the analysis of my game. The writing process has also been very helpful in clarifying some of my ideas about how best to develop, and a good use of time when not engaged in matchplay. Thank heavens for down-time!