The County Ground at Taunton was a very busy place to be on Wednesday, where despite the dull grey misty start to the day the Somerset players were out on the grass again being put through their paces.

When I spoke to assistant coach Mark Garaway at lunchtime he told me: "Everybody came through the day yesterday without any problems, and this morning we have been working on our fielding skills, and working on some of the routines that we will be using during the season in our pre-match warm ups.

"It has dried out quite a lot during the morning so this afternoon we are going to have two nets in operation, one for spin and one for seam."

Meanwhile in the Centre of Excellence, Keith Tomlins who is the ECB National Coach for the West of England was in the middle of a course he is running for the Under-14s age group, and later in the week he will be running a similar course for the Under-13s.

Keith told me: "This is a course for the best youngsters in the age groups who have been put forward by their county boards, so there will be some very promising young cricketers on view. We try to get together for a few days several times during the year, in October, December, February, April and June."

Just round the corner from the Centre of Excellence the Somerset Cricket Museum was also doing a roaring trade, having opened specially to host a party of 50 members of the Worcestershire Cricket Society who had made the journey down the M5 by coach for a day at the County Ground.

One of the visitors told me: "I was very impressed with the exhibits that are on show in the Somerset Cricket Museum, which is one of the best that I have been to. Somerset are very lucky to have this kind of facility. We wish we had a cricket museum at Worcester but the trouble is that it floods too much at New Road."

The Worcestershire party told me that they were looking forward to hosting the Somerset supporters again this year when the two counties meet in the on May 19th.

© SOMERSET