Squad to face Worcestershire...guess who's not in it?

Yep, you guessed it, no Chris Tremlett, though the club have at least seen fit to now come clean as to the reason, instead of fobbing us off with "workload", they now detail a minor groin injury which is keeping him off the pitch. Remains to be seen how long that "minor" injury keeps him out for; if he doesn't come out on Sunday for the Pro40 match I'll be very worried.

The squad (and my expected team) is as follows:

Matthew Spriegel
Arun Harinath
Mark Ramprakash
Usman Afzaal
Rory Hamilton-Brown
Stewart Walters
Steven Davies
Gareth Batty
Rao Iftikhar Anjum
Jade Dernbach
Andre Nel

12th man: Chris Schofield

We shall see how that middle order will shape up given that RHB dropped himself to six, below Davies, against Hove, so its possible they might go with Davies-RHB-Walters, or Walters-Davies-RHB, but I'd be surprised and disappointed in the skipper to see him bat anywhere below five frankly.

The extra batsman does in theory make us harder to break down, thought as I've said before Schofield almost qualifies as a pure batsman these days.  I'm not sure of Walters' form, he got a duck for the seconds last week, so in actual fact his presence may not strengthen the batting as much as we might hope.

I certainly hope Spriegel bowls a few more overs, certainly he and Afzaal ought to given the four man bowling attack.  The Worcs squad hasn't been released to my knowledge, but Solanki and Jaques played in the first match, so the batting will revolve around them, and the bowling around Jones, Richardson and possibly Imran Arif, who didn't play in their first game but took four in the friendly with Leeds Uni last week.

We have to avoid defeat at all costs in this match, no question, for the sake of morale!  Hamilton-Brown needs to win his first toss for us, and unless its a real green top, bat first and put down a marker, make it all but impossible for us to lose.  Over to you Rory....