THE start of the 2015 cricket season may still be some way off but the members of the trophy winning Somerset VI team held their first squad session in the Indoor School at the County Ground at the weekend.

Among those present was Somerset’s England player Ed Hossell who is a regular member of the county side.

He said: “We really did ourselves proud last year. We finished fifth out of seven in our first season in the National League. “There are no easy games in this league and I think we performed well against all the other teams. “We got to the finals of the cup competition and won the T20 cup which was awesome.

“I don’t think anyone expected us to get to finals day and to win the semi-final with a six from the last ball was amazing. “Warwickshire were the favourites in the final and to beat them was great.

“We’ve had a few training sessions and it's been intense and has shown how keen people are to push on next season.”

Early on in the coming season Hossell, who represented England VI in the World Cup in South Africa, will be playing for the international side against India, something that he is really looking forward to.

He added: “It's really good to be a part of the squad again as we take on India in May.

“It’s great to play high quality, highly competitive cricket and it's really exciting to take on India and try to cause a really big upset.

“There’s quite a big step up from domestic to international cricket and India are the world champions and we saw how brilliant some of their players are in South Africa. “However, on the flip side we saw that they are human and they are beatable. “Our opening bowlers caused them real trouble when we played them in South Africa and we were really unlucky not to get an early breakthrough.”