Crunch CB40 match at Taunton

With all the shenanigans going on at Lord's its very difficult to focus on today's game at Taunton, but a crucial clash such as it is warrants my attention over the alleged cheats of the Pakistan cricket team, at least for a few hours.

The squad hasn't been announced on the official site but I imagine they will go with a team along the lines of that which beat the Unicorns at Wormsley last week, but with Chris Tremlett drafted in to replace on of Dernbach, Meaker or Cheetham:

Hamilton-Brown
Davies
Ramprakash
Roy
Walters
Wilson
Schofield
Batty
Tremlett
Cheetham
Dernbach

Dropping Meaker goes against my 'Surrey players first' mantra, and it is a tough call because although Cheetham took four wickets last week to Meaker's one, Meaker was economical and Dernbach's place is by no means safe - he was very expensive last week.  I think ultimately Dernbach's wicket taking threat will earn him a place and Cheetham will have another chance to prove himself.

I still worry about the lack of batting depth, such has been the effectiveness of our opening partnership in limited overs cricket that we haven't had to worry too much about the lower order.  However if the top order fails we get very quickly into numbers 7-11, who cannot be relied upon to score a bucketload of runs.  I hope Walters is back in the side and I hope Ramprakash is restored to the number three role, though I doubt he will be.  Wilson is in good form and I hope he can now prove himself in the shorter forms as he did in the Championship vs Leicestershire.

Roy's knock in the Championship in the week hints that he might be back into the sort of form that saw him become Surrey's first Twenty20 centurion which would be a real boon for the middle order.

We absolutely have to win this to qualify which is no mean feat.  Though we've beaten Somerset in both T20 fixtures earlier in the season, in the reverse CB40 fixture in July we were on the receiving end of a batting masterclass from Trescothick, de Bruyn and Hildreth and lost by almost 100 runs.  Make no mistake we will have to be 100% on our A-game today, and you get the feeling that if we are to have any chance of winning we need Davies and Hamilton-Brown to fire in spectacular style.  Come on boys!