You might have read yesterday that Stephen Harmison suffered a slight injury to his left hand during one of our warm-up games. Well, it’s a good job that there weren’t a few more, notably to his opening bowling partner. For the game in question, I had the misfortune to be paired with Andrew Flintoff and let’s just say that he didn’t exactly play by the rules.

The idea is that you’re supposed to try and slap your opponent on the knee, a light-hearted game that warms up your lower body and helps with agility and movement.

But you know what players can be like. Inevitably, it got a bit competitive, aggressive and overenthusiastic and, for some reason, Flintoff and I ended up slapping each other’s faces. He announced himself as the 3-2 winner, but I was convinced that he threw a couple of shots at me before the whistle had blown. He had better be careful next time because I’ll be looking for revenge.

Cheap shots aside, the preparation for our first match under Peter Moores has been hugely enjoyable. There have been a few new fielding drills, complete with forfeits for those who make mistakes. Nothing too silly, just press-ups, burpees and star jumps, but enough to make you want to do things right.

Everything Peter has asked us to do, he has encouraged us to do quickly and effectively, making sure our brains are always ticking over. Generally, everything in our warm-ups has been entertaining, energetic stuff, which seems to be the Moores way.

It’s not his style to try to impose himself on the group, dictating what we should do. He has emphasised his belief to us that, as elite sportsmen, as the best 12 cricketers in the country, we shouldn’t need telling what to do, which is absolutely right. We don’t need babysitting, we don’t need our hands held.

We should all be big enough and ugly enough to take responsibility for our own performances. Peter will ensure that we have everything we feel we need; then the onus is on us to perform.

Another part of his philosophy is that there should be no moaning or whingeing. If the weather is awful or the pitch is crap, it doesn’t matter – there’s nothing we can do about it. The challenge then is to think positively how the situation can be turned to our advantage. On Tuesday, for example, we weren’t able to practise outside because of the weather.

Obviously, we had to practise indoors, but Peter stressed that, even though that wasn’t ideal, we should be looking to get as much from an indoor session as we would outdoors. I like the way he thinks.

Whenever we play West Indies at Lord’s, my mind goes back to my Test debut against them seven years ago, when I was a nervous wreck waiting to go into bat at No 11 while Dominic Cork and Darren Gough were knocking off the 30-odd runs needed to win. It will be a very different West Indies team we face this summer, especially without Brian Lara. His absence would create a big hole in any team, but we will still have plenty of talented, attacking batsmen to bowl at.

On their last tour three years ago, Chris Gayle hit me for six fours in an over at the Oval. The funny thing was that it didn’t really sink in at the time. A couple of days later, Freddie said to me: “What were you doing getting hit for six fours in an over?” And then I suddenly realised. I’d obviously been so wrapped up in trying to get him out and always felt I had a chance – that’s just the way he bats and we had plenty of runs to play with at the time – that such an unpleasant statistic had passed me by. Perhaps it’s a useful habit to have formed.

Anyway, I’m hoping for an early finish to this Test because Sarah, my wife, is due to give birth early next week. As this game is in London, I won’t be dashing back up to Yorkshire if she goes into labour during the match. If things start to happen during the next Test at Headingley, though, I’ll be a little closer to home. The plan is that, if we’re batting I’ll be rushing off to her bedside, but if we’re bowling I’ll have to stay put and say hello to the little ’un a bit later.

One way and another, it’s a time for new beginnings at the moment.