In his final Sky Sports column, Liam Plunkett provides an update on his injury, reflects on England’s 4-1 ODI series win as well as talking mind games, the IPL auction and the forthcoming T20I Tri-Series…
It is always frustrating to miss games because of injury but I'm getting there, I'm back running and I started bowling today so I'm looking to play by the end of next week.
Hopefully, I'll be back for the first T20I but it might be the second, I'm not too sure yet.
Obviously we wanted to win the ODI series 5-0, you always want to win every game but on that day in Adelaide we didn't play brilliant cricket and they managed to beat us on Aussie day. The way we bounced back in Perth was great though.
As Eoin Morgan said, other than the odd special knock - from J-Roy, Woakesy and Jos Buttler - as a team we didn't bat as well as we'd like but we still managed to win the series 4-1.
Credit has to go to the bowlers, Tom Curran came in and obviously got his five-for - the ball was tailing in and reversing a little bit and he bowled really nicely. It's good for the squad and good for the team that people are coming in and doing really well.
Steve Smith put it out there that we totally outplayed them and we don't feel that we played our best, that's a good sign for us. We're not going to rest on our laurels, we know we need to improve and that's what we'll do. We've got the World Cup next year, we can get better and if we're beating good teams when we're not at our best then that has to be a good thing.
Smith also said a couple of things about the way we play and whether it can work in a tournament. I think that is just some early mind games, he's going to say that but we're not going to stop playing that brand of cricket.
That's why we're definitely one of the top three, maybe even the best one-day team in the world in the right conditions. Why would we stop doing what we do?
It shows over the last however many years we've won a lot of games, the odd game we've messed up but we learn, we improve and we bat all the way down so we'll back ourselves to beat anyone on our day and hopefully that's going to come right in the tournament.
We've been close in the World T20 and the Champions Trophy and the next one is the World Cup, we're looking forward to hopefully taking it all the way.
Of course, the IPL auction took place over the weekend and people do talk about it in the dressing but if you do get picked up it's an absolutely massive bonus.
Obviously, people who deserve it have gone. Chris Woakes has been outstanding and he's got picked up at the right time, he's one of my good mates so I'm over the moon for him.
I feel like there are enough tournaments around the world now, in Bangladesh and South Africa, for example, that are available but you want to play in the IPL.
If you can't then you just have to crack on and having not been picked up, it'll give me a chance to play some red-ball cricket for Yorkshire and just try to improve so I can help win games for England over the summer.
It is on to the T20 Tri-Series for us now and as with all white-ball cricket you've got to be on the money straightaway in T20. You've only got four overs, you know the batsmen are going to come harder than in the one-day stuff so you've got to have your options available and be switched on from ball one.
It's fast and furious, the guys enjoy it. You've got to switch to your skills and variations a bit earlier than in one-day cricket, that's probably the biggest difference as a bowler.
The way the ODI games were scheduled has meant the lads have been able to get out and about and Australia is a great spot to do that.
In the cities, we've been able to have a look around, go for coffees and stuff. I managed to catch up with Will Rhodes, who used to play for Yorkshire and is now at Warwickshire, in Perth which was good.
It's all fairly chilled really, everyone puts a lot of energy into training, we practise really tough which is why we've been so successful. You might start at 1pm and not get back until 5pm-ish then do a gym session and by the time you're finished it can be quite late on.
The guys play a lot of golf and when you go to places where there are nice beaches they'll go down there and do recovery on the beach.
But, for me, when we have days off, I still have to do my rehab: work with the physios, do the strength and conditioning stuff and I'm up at 6.30, 7am doing running sessions.
You need to get the work into your legs and build it up otherwise you go from zero to 100 and you're not up to speed when you go back to training.
The Super Bowl is this weekend and I'm still trying to figure out where I can watch it. We'll have practice obviously so if it clashes with that then I'll try and keep my phone on me to keep up-to-date with it at least. I'm hoping to be able to watch at least a couple of quarters, I'd be upset if I didn't. I might even try and avoid the result and then watch it afterwards.
Whatever happens with that, I'm excited to get back playing, this is a great team to be a part of and hopefully I'll be fit and back in the XI soon!