Billy Root column: The season so far and playing on live TV

Glamorgan batsman Billy Root reflects on the County Championship season so far and prepares to face big brother Joe once again as his native county travels to Cardiff on Thursday.

I think it's been a really encouraging start to the County Championship for us as a group.

There have been some strong individual efforts, but they've lead to good team performances and it was great to get the first win against Kent, which was the only thing missing up until then.

It's also been pleasing to see the younger players in the squad sticking their hands up and making contributions. The likes of Kiran Carlson, Callum Taylor and Dan Douthwaite have been in some tricky positions when we've been up against it as a team but they've played really well.

It makes my job as a middle-order batsman a lot easier as well when you've got someone like David Lloyd in such good form opening the batting.

He's been thrown into this new role as an opener and has thrived with both bat and ball, which is testament to how much work he put in over the winter after his injury last year.

Brothers Joe and Billy share a joke during Glamorgan's opening fixture against Yorkshire

For me personally, it's been a really enjoyable start to the season as well. I loved every minute of that first game against Yorkshire, being able to see Joe and exchange some friendly banter on the pitch.

He messaged me after the game to say how proud he was of me. He also said he wasn't too pleased with being brought on to bowl to me when I was on 99, and neither was I!

But more than anything it was really pleasing to get some runs for myself and to help put Glamorgan in a strong position to potentially win the game.

It was a big shame when the snow took a few sessions out of that first game for us because we were in a good place, and it would've been amazing to start off with a win against that strong side, but we took plenty of positives from it.

We were unlucky with the weather against last week, with the rain this time taking a lot of time out of our game against Lancashire.

I really enjoyed the challenge of facing Jimmy Anderson there, though. His record speaks for itself, he's such a skilful bowler.

I didn't ask Joe for any tips on facing him - I think he left me to figure it out for myself!

But I was proud of how the young guys, Callum and Dan in particular, stood up to the challenge of facing him and got half-centuries during a crucial period of the game.

As a batting unit, we took a lot from that because a bowler of his class can blow away a batting line-up, but he didn't do that despite bowling extremely well.

Billy Root opened his 2021 season with a century against his home county, Yorkshire

We're playing Yorkshire again on Thursday, at home this time, and the dynamic of our team has changed a lot since that first game.

We have the two Australians (Marnus Labuschagne and Michael Neser) in now and it's been great having them around.

• Hogan back for Glam against Yorkshire

Michael Neser played last week and think he bowled about 10 overs for one run at one stage. On another day he'd have had five wickets, but it was great to watch him in action.

Marnus is just Marnus, he's not changed a bit since he was last here. He's great to have in the dressing room, us young batsmen learn so much from him and feed off his energy, as well as being one of the best batsmen in the world.

Hopefully Joe plays in this one, they're a strong side who are second in the table at the moment, but it would be really nice to see him again.

There is a bit more on this game as well because it's the first time in Glamorgan history that there's been a County Championship game live on Sky.

We're really looking forward to it, especially for the young guys playing so well at the moment - it just gives a bit more exposure that we don't always get. It'll be great for us as a club to host a four-day game on TV and I just hope we can put in another good performance for everyone to watch.

We have T20 Blast games on Sky quite often, but this exposure for the Championship will be great. The Bob Willis Trophy final last year showed there is still plenty of appetite for the longer format and when it's on such a big platform people will watch it.

More good news to come from this week is that we'll be having fans back in the ground in early June.

It might feel a bit weird at first! When we played behind closed doors to begin with, it was strange, but now we've gotten quite used to it, so it'll probably take some getting used to, but there's no doubt it's a very positive thing.

More importantly it'll be great for the fans and the members to come back. They've been starved of live cricket for so long now I'm sure they'll be glad to get back and it'll be lovely to see some familiar faces that we haven't seen since 2019.

It's really exciting now and everything hopefully seems to getting back to how it used to be.

We're in a really good place as a squad, and every game is just as exciting at the moment, no matter where or who we're playing against.