The last few weeks have been a rollercoaster ride for Surrey’s leg spinner Chris Schofield but now that he is in South Africa with the England squad and ready to get stuck into the ICC World Twenty20, he has managed to find time to write a blog for www.surreycricket.com to let us know what he has been up to. He writes…

Things have been pretty hectic since our victory over Kent in the NatWest Pro40 at Canterbury. I spent some time up at Loughborough with the members of the squad who weren’t playing in the NatWest One Day International series before the squad came together on Saturday evening.

There was a great feeling in the camp as England had just beaten India at Lord’s to take the series four-three. On top of that, I had a great phone call from James Benning at about 2pm on the Sunday. I couldn’t hear anything other than the Surrey boys singing the team song after beating Warwickshire up at Edgbaston.

Sunday was a tough day though as we had a few team meetings in between meeting the press and speaking at press conferences. We finally left the hotel to get to Heathrow Airport at about 7pm before boarding the flight at 9:30pm.

It had been a long draining day and most of the lads were pretty tired. We were in first class, so the food was very good. I had some king prawns in sweet chilli and noodles to start and then some Atlantic Salmon with Roast potatoes for the main course. After that, I watched the movie, “Fracture” with Anthony Hopkins, which was quite good and then fell asleep for the remainder of the flight.

We flew into Johannesburg at about 9am the following day and got straight onto a coach to travel to the team hotel, with a police escort.

We didn’t have any formal training so most of the lads did a bit of exercise to get rid of the cobwebs. I spent a bit of time with the physio to see how my hand – that I injured against Kent – was healing up. I was a bit concerned at the time it happened but the recovery process has been good so far and I doubt I’ll have the stitches in much longer.

That evening we went to the ICC awards at the Sandton Convention Centre in Johannesburg. It was a good evening and there were a few familiar faces there, including my Surrey buddy, Harbhajan. It was a great buzz to be around so many big names and it was no real surprise to see that Aussie Captain, Ricky Ponting was voted the ICC Player of the Year.

I’m really excited about bowling to a player like him. People have said that it would be a different kettle of fish bowling to world-class players like Ponting and the like but I’ll just take it in my stride. The whole reason that I think I was successful in this form of the game is that I just tried to enjoy it. That said, I did bowl well and I feel that I have the consistency and the skills to restrict the best players. Alan Butcher reminded me that most of my wickets in Twenty20 Cup were top order players so I can take a lot of confidence out of that. Not to mention that most of the teams would not have seen a lot of me, if any, so that has got to work in my favour.

So far, there has been no indication of whether I’ll be in the England starting eleven for our first match against Zimbabwe starting tomorrow at Newlands. However I get the feeling that they might go in with two spinners so I’ll just have to keep my fingers crossed.

I’m really excited about being here. It’s great to be a part of the England squad again. I have come across most of the lads in either County Cricket or junior representative stuff so it has been relatively easy to settle in. However, a few of the guys have been together throughout the whole NatWest One-Day series so for us “Twenty20 specialists”, it’s a matter of playing “catch up” to get in with all the banter that is being thrown around. It will be good to get to know KP (Kevin Pietersen) and Colly (Paul Collingwood) a bit better as I have never played cricket with or against them before. They are both exciting players so it will be a great learning experience for me.

I can’t wait to get started. I spoke to Alan Butcher before I left and he reassured me of what I achieved earlier in the season during the domestic Twenty20 competition. I have also spoken with Jeremy Snape about the psychological aspect of cricket. I just want to go out to enjoy it and try and express myself.

Chris Schofield player profile page.

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