When Geoff Miller rang on Saturday morning to let me know about selection for the first Test, I was in the field at the Rose Bowl so I missed his call. I saw that I had a voicemail when I got back to the dressing-room, but I had to go to batting practice before I could hear it. When I finally listened to the message, it said only that I should call him back, no clues as to whether he had good or bad news and, try as I might, I couldn't guess anything from his tone of voice.

Anyway, his news for me was positive and I just said: “Good stuff, Dusty, thank you very much.” So last night I only had to drive from the Rose Bowl to London, rather than back home to Yorkshire. Nice as it would have been to get back to the family, if I'd been left out of the Test squad, that would have been one long, lonely drive home.

It has been a while since I had to sit through such a wait to see what the selectors had decided. It brought back memories of my early days, when I was making my way into the England team. On one occasion a few years ago, as I was waiting to find out whether I'd been picked to go on tour, I learnt that I had made the squad from my mother-in-law, who had seen the news on Teletext before the selectors had been able to tell me.

I'll admit to a few butterflies these past few weeks, but there's no point getting too worked up about what you can do to impress the selectors. To a large extent it's out of your hands. All you can do is work as hard as possible in preparation, then go out and take wickets whenever you can. I've managed to pick up a few for Yorkshire this season, but I'd like to think there are 248 other reasons why the selectors would be interested in me. If I make the starting XI at Lord's on Thursday, it would be nice to take those next two wickets to notch up 250 in Tests. And a few more after that, I hope.

The lines of communication between selectors and players have been really good. I had a chat with Dusty at Headingley a couple of weeks ago, but there is only so much that a selector can say. Selection is never just a matter of them saying: “If you score a load of runs or take a few wickets, you'll be in the side.” It's not that simple because stuff happens in the meantime. Joe Bloggs could take eight-fer three matches running and the situation would suddenly have changed. Likewise, someone else can pull a fetlock at any time. Just look at all the speculation over whether Andrew Flintoff would be picked for these Tests. In the end, he just wasn't available.

It's been a little strange playing for England Lions against the New Zealanders at the Rose Bowl. With selection looming, it was a match in which you were effectively in competition with team-mates as well as the opposition. Because cricket is essentially an individualistic team sport - there's only ever one person bowling or batting - it's not something that affects you while you're performing, but it's in the back of everyone's mind. In reality there were probably only two or three of us who were in the frame for the first Test, but everyone that plays in those games knows that they're featuring in the selectors' thoughts.

Of the New Zealand batsmen, Brendon McCullum probably looked in the best touch. He made a quick 40-odd in the first innings and looked as though he was picking up where he'd left off in the Indian Premier League. Then again, he's the sort of player who always looks dangerous, but you're never sure how long he'll hang around. We'll be hoping that he doesn't hang around too long at Lord's.

I managed to scrape a few runs in the first innings and a few people have been asking what has happened to my batting this season. In case you haven't had the pleasure yet, I've been hitting more boundaries and scoring more quickly than usual. Well, I've decided to go into bat with a different mindset this season. Previously, my main goal had been crease occupation, which made me probably the most boring batsman in the world. Now I'm thinking that, if I'm going to be in for 30 balls, I may as well try to score 15 runs rather than just scratching one or two. Brendon McCullum I ain't, but it makes batting a lot more fun.

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• Graham Spiers