No excuses, but....

According to Somerset skipper Marcus Trescothick, it is "barmy" to play a Twenty20 match the day after a four day game. I couldn't agree more Marcus and it may well count against Surrey in their game with Tres's side tonight.

Trescothick insists that Somerset will be "fresher and sharper" after their break, and when you look at the injury list after the Derbyshire game, you'd make him bang right. Batty, Nel, Wilson and Linley all picked up injuries and surely won't feature tonight. Dernbach is already ruled out and Meaker may or may not be back to full fitness. Add to that Jordan and Brown (any others?!) and we've got ourselves a right pickle.

Unsurprisingly the Surrey squad hasn't been named yet, Adams will want to leave it as long as possible to assess the fitness of all his players. However I think it very likely that we'll see the likes of Jewell, Lancefield and maybe even Dunn given a look in tonight. We badly need the England Lions to release Steve Davies for this game, I hope they're sympathetic!

This is not to say that those players don't have the necessary quality to beat Somerset, it could be the case that the youngsters come in and really turn it on, but it'll be tough against a good side.

The Somerset squad is as follows: Trescothick, Compton, Hildreth, de Bruyn, Pollard, Buttler, Suppiah, Phillips, Kartik, Thomas, Turner and Waller. Trescothick hasn't quite scaled the heights we know he can in the T20 this year, but Compton looked in decent touch when I saw him against Essex, and Hildreth, de Bruyn and Pollard need no introduction. In Thomas and Kartik they also have two of the best T20 bowlers around and Pollard has been a revelation with the ball for them as well with 14 wickets already (all three bowlers are in the top 20 best economy rates in the competition so far, Thomas is the leading wicket taker in the country and Pollard is fourth in that table).

If we do lose heavily tonight it will be easy to fall back on the excuse that the schedule cost us, and I actually have a great deal of sympathy with that. However I still hope we can put in a fighting performance with maybe some flashes of brilliance from the youngsters, I'll be satisfied with that.

Update:  The Surrey squad has been announced and is as follows:  Rory Hamilton-Brown, Andrew Symonds, Younus Khan, Mark Ramprakash, Stewart Walters, Chris Schofield, Gareth Batty, Andre Nel, Jason Roy, Tom Lancefield, Tom Jewell, Chris Tremlett, Matthew Spriegel, Stuart Meaker.  I'd be surprised to see Nel and Batty on the field, but you never know!  I'd be interested to see Lancefield, he's been in cracking form for the Second XI, can he follow in Roy's footsteps?

Update 2: The eagle eyed amongst you will have noticed the lack of a wicket keeper in the above squad!  Gary Wilson has now been added which means the miserable sinners at the England Lions have not released Davies.  Expect therefore Lancefield may well come in to open, and Wilson will bat down the order, doesn't look a very strong side to me, but we shall see.