To be able to help the Lahore Qalandars win their first Pakistan Super League title on Sunday was a very special feeling.
At Lahore, they have been working hard for the last six or seven years to win the PSL, so to be able to bring the trophy home for them was amazing.
You could see how happy all the coaches, players and fans were when we won it. I was happy too, but it was really nice to be able to do it for them. They were buzzing.
The atmosphere inside the stadium was incredible.
It was a full house for the last couple of games, and it’s probably up there as the best crowd I’ve ever played in front of. It was just non-stop noise, and it was really good fun!
Only being there for a month, I can’t tell you everything there is to know about the Qalandars as a franchise.
But they were brilliant with me. There were all so chilled, very easy to get on with, and I haven’t got a bad word to say about them.
I’ve been speaking to Haris Rauf about coming over to Yorkshire at the start of the season, and he’s really looking forward to it.
He’s one of the fastest bowlers in the world, and hopefully he can bowl some more rockets like he has been doing for Lahore. I’m sure he will do a good job for us.
I’m delighted to have finished the winter off the way I have done.
Scoring 41 at the end of our innings in the final was really good fun, and the hundred I got against Islamabad at the end of the group stage was something I didn’t think I’d be able to do in my T20 career given I bat in the middle order.
I think we were 12-3 when I went in, and going in at those tricky stages is something I quite enjoy. Getting the team out of sticky situations has been one of the best parts of my T20 career so far.
It’s something I’ve managed to do a couple of times for Yorkshire, like in that home game against Worcestershire last summer. Long may it continue when I’m in those situations.
To be able to go from doing so badly with Hobart in the Big Bash, when I felt quite down, to do what I and the team did in the PSL is a big tick in the box for me.
That shows what I’ve been trying to achieve over the last few years – that growing maturity – has really worked. I was able to put the Big Bash stuff to one side very quickly.
To be honest, I don’t think I was batting for Hobart the way I have done when I’ve had success in the past.
I was a bit tentative and wasn’t really hitting the ball as hard as I have done. I was just trying to place the ball in the gaps.
When I got out to Pakistan, I thought, ‘I may as well just give it a crack’.
I was hitting the ball a lot harder to try and beat fielders on the boundary rather than just trying to nurdle it around into the gaps.
I had a tricky time in the Big Bash, but they are the times when you learn the most I think.
I could have done a lot better for Hobart, but as long as I learn from that and don’t make the same mistakes again, then you can view it as some sort of positive.
Overall, including my England T20 debut in the West Indies, it’s been a very successful winter.
I was on a flight at 7am Monday morning and arrived home that night.
I will have a pretty chilled week before heading out to Dubai with the Yorkshire lads on our pre-season tour on Sunday.
The reason I really want to go on that tour, despite the busy winter I’ve had, is that I need to go and do some red ball work and get on track with that before the season starts.
It will be great to see everyone again, and I’m really looking forward to it.
