In his latest exclusive diary entry for CricInfo, Alec looks ahead to the Second Test, emphasising the need for a wholesale improvement in England’s performance

Alec Stewart17-Jul-2001In his latest exclusive diary entry for CricInfo, Alec looks ahead to the Second Test, emphasising the need for a wholesale improvement in England’s performance. He also reflects on Surrey’s Benson and Hedges Cup Final win, and on the contribution made by the county to the current England side.It was great to be part of the Surrey team that beat Gloucestershire on Saturday – they’ve set the benchmark for one-day cricket over the last three years, and they were the side that all other 17 counties have been trying to knock off. Fortunately, we put in one of our best, if not the best, bowling and fielding performances in one-day cricket for the last two or three years. It was a brave decision by Adam Hollioake to bat first at Lord’s in overcast conditions, when the pitch had been under cover for the previous 24 hours or so. It certainly paid off, so full credit to Adam for his boldness, and to the Surrey batsmen for posting a competitive total, and no praise can be too high for our bowlers and fielders for the way we performed in the second half of the game.We may even have five Surrey batsmen in the England side back at Lord’s in the Second Test, and that reflects great credit on the club. To provide nearly half the Test side is remarkable – it certainly weakens the county side, and makes our chances of retaining the CricInfo Championship for the third year in a row rather slim, but we should all look at the wider picture, and that’s to try and provide the best possible side for England.Hopefully Graham Thorpe will be playing for England again come Thursday – he’s been our number one batsman over the last year, and it’s been a huge blow that he’s been unavailable. And it’s good that Mark Ramprakash is fit again; he’s always been a top player. I rate him and Graeme Hick as England’s two best county cricketers. Ramps is a Test class batsman. I know he’d like his figures to improve, but when he was left out of the South African trip 18 months ago he was averaging around 42 in his previous 15 Test matches. He’s playing as well as I’ve seen him play, and comes back in a more relaxed frame of mind. Hopefully he’ll be able to reproduce his Surrey form at Lord’s for England.Whenever you play at Lord’s it should lift you – it’s the home of cricket, has its own special atmosphere and is certainly my favourite ground. But I also think the fact that touring sides only get to play at Lord’s once every four or five years – some players will only play there once in their career – makes everyone lift their game.England have had a poor record there for a while, but we’ve won our last three Tests there. It would be nice if we could continue that, but Australia are a fantastic side. People have now seen at first hand how good they are. What I’ve said and will continue to say, is that at the end of this series we’ll know how much progress we’ve made in the last 18 months or so, because we’re testing ourselves against the very best. That assessment should be based less on the actual result than on how we played against them, and at Edgbaston we didn’t do ourselves too many favours. We need to improve on our performance in every department of the game, and we know we can.