The traditionalists among you may want to take your summer holiday during the next month because Twenty20 cricket is returning to England.

The ECB are hoping the competition this year will again see huge numbers of people pouring through the turnstiles, spending money and having a good time with it.

Sensibly, the organisers have adopted the 'if it ain't broke' attitude and left the rules of the game the same as last year. It is up to each county's marketing department to come up with original ideas for entertainment (other than the cricket!) and knowing Neil Lenham and his troops, I'm sure they will have come up with the goods.

The Twenty20 games are being played a month later than last year. This may have been a master stroke by the organisers. One of the keys to its success in 2003 was that not a ball was lost to the weather.

On the contrary, the matches were played, mainly, in blistering sunshine. This June has seen considerably poorer weather than last year and everyone is keeping fingers crossed that July will bring the start of the summer sunshine.

The conditions on day one of our Championship match at Arundel last week were some of the worst I have ever had to play in and so I can only imagine what it must have been like to be a spectator that day (Sussex's abysmal batting aside).

Weather like that during the Twenty20 games would be a disaster for English cricket in terms of lost revenue for the ECB but, more importantly, in terms of lost exposure to the game of cricket.

One of the most pleasing aspects of the competition last year was the fact that the crowds were made up of women, children and young men, complimenting the stock of middle-aged and elderly males who have traditionally been cricket followers.

The importance of this increase in exposure to the game cannot be underestimated. I wonder how many of those who watched a cricket game for the first time last year enjoyed it enough to give the longer version a try? I'd wager it was more than a few.

The players have had little time to think back to last year to recall the tactics we used. It will be interesting to see if teams come up with any new ideas. We started poorly last year but then we soon found a rhythm and won our last three group games to finish fifth in the country.

That was not enough to get through to the semi-finals day last year but this year there will be a quarter-finals too, so winning three out of five may be enough.

At the start of the tournament, batsmen made the mistake of thinking they had to hit every ball for a boundary. They soon learnt that even in a 20-over game there is time to get your eye in and a well-scampered single is every bit as important as a crashed four.

Scores of 160 (eight an over) seemed to be about par. Bowlers, likewise, had to adapt their game. It was not just about bowling yorkers. The bowler who mixed his pace well and was committed to either hitting the deck hard or getting it right in the block hole had the most success.

It was also interesting to note how effective spinners were. Contrary to village cricket folklore, not all batsmen find it an easy skill to hit a well-flighted spinner for four or six.

I expect Mark Davis and Mushtaq to be just as effective as the rest of us. We just need the rain to stay away.