By Dave Clark
Jason Roy admits he may have to rein in his attacking instincts in order to boost his England aspirations this summer.
The 23-year-old Surrey batsman has been involved in both the England Performance Programme and with England Lions, but knows bigger scores will be needed to press for further honours.
The right-hander has made only one first-class century to date – although he also has five tons to his name in limited-overs cricket – and is now prepared to bide his time at the crease before blowing away opposition bowling attacks.
A 57-ball twenty20 century against Kent in 2010 highlighted Roy's credentials for pyrotechnics, yet he is aware innings like that need to be a more frequent occurrence.
"You've got to put a few shots away, be very simple, be greedy up until about 40 runs and then you can add a few more shots to your game," Roy told ecb.co.uk.
"Until that 40 you can't do anything you have to just get your eye in and set a good base for yourself.
"I just want to be consistent and play all forms again and hopefully get the amount of runs and win games.
"Especially in championship cricket I want to get bigger runs, stay there longer, and get enough runs to help the team win.
"England is always in my mind. I want to score runs and go game-by-game.
"I've got to do well and maybe England will come knocking, but until then I've just got to concentrate on Surrey and do well and win games for them. I've just got to score my runs and see what happens."
Roy was part of a Surrey side relegated to Division Two of the LV= County Championship last season. However, he expects the Friends Life t20 runners-up to be stronger this year.
The arrival of Graham Ford as head coach and captain Graeme Smith's availability for the entire summer after retiring from international cricket makes Surrey favourites for promotion, a tag that Roy is comfortable with.
"We're looking good, looking well-drilled," he added. "New coach with Graham Ford and everyone's getting on with him really well. All of his theories, the way he works, and his work ethic is amazing.
"We've got to rebuild and we've done all that over the pre-season, so we've got to get off to a good start and even if we don't just persevere and keep enjoying our cricket.
"We've got a great group of guys, great players who are very talented, so we've just got to keep enjoying it and hope we get back up.
"We just didn't get enough runs or enough wickets (last season) - it's as simple as that. We've moved on from that.
"Obviously Graham Ford coming here - and we've got Graeme Smith coming in again - makes a massive difference. We've just got to forget about what's happened and get on with the future.
"We'll just go about our business and try and win games and doing what we do; you can't really control anything else but what we can do."