Twenty20 cricket is becoming increasingly like baseball so I expect more sixes than ever to be hit this year.

Baseball players have a repeatable swing that helps them put the ball out of the park consistently. It is a skill that cricketers are working on more than ever.

We have been practising the art of six-hitting since our last LV= County Championship match, mainly so we know exactly how hard we need to hit the ball to get it over the rope.

Sometimes batters hit the ball too hard so we have been focusing on maintaining a consistent technique while learning more about how big a swing is needed to clear boundary fielders.

It obviously varies at different grounds and against different bowlers and in South Africa it varies even more, depending on whether you are playing at altitude.

Our practice should provide more entertainment than ever for visitors to the Rose Bowl, where we start our Friends Provident t20 campaign against the Kent Spitfires tonight.

Unfortunately, no place in the Champions League for the finalists has already taken the shine off this season’s competition.

That pot of gold will not be at the end of the rainbow for the FP t20’s winners and runners-up because the Champions League clashes with the finale of our domestic season.

Like footballers, we want to test ourselves against the best domestic sides from around the world but it is particularly bad news for teams like Middlesex and Surrey, who have paid a lot of money for big-name players.

Middlesex’s investment in David Warner and Adam Gilchrist will be hard to recoup now there is no prospect of going further than Finals Day.

But for us, getting to a first Finals Day on August 14 is a massive incentive – especially as it is at the Rose Bowl.

We could not have a tougher test tonight as Kent are a well-drilled Twenty20 unit.

It will be a breath of fresh air to get away from our relentless schedule, but it is still far too hectic.

Unbelievably, we still have to start an LV= County Championship match against Essex at 11.30am tomorrow morning!

Some of us are bound to be bleary-eyed. It is a real struggle to get to sleep after Twenty20 games, especially day-nighters, because the intensity creates so much adrenaline.

It takes a lot out of you, but the day after our important Championship game against Essex, we have to travel to Wales to play our next FP t20 game against Glamorgan at the SWALEC Stadium!

And two weeks tomorrow we face Sussex under the Hove floodlights before returning west to play Gloucestershire at Bristol less than 24 hours later!

Footballers complain about playing two games in a week but we are playing three t20 games a week for the next six weeks – plus a couple of four-day matches.

We are all good athletes but the ECB must think we are super human.