No Pietersen for Scotland game

Our second game in a fortnight against Scotland takes place tomorrow and although Kevin Pietersen had a couple of knocks against Cambridge University in a game we lost heavily he is not in the squad that has traveled to Edinburgh. He will almost certainly play against Essex in the four day game starting Wednesday though.

The squad for tomorrow is in fact the same as that for last Sunday's Leicestershire game, or the website claims it was even though Batty wasn't actually in the squad published ahead of the game last week. Anyway, the XI will almost certainly be the same:

Rory Hamilton-Brown
Steven Davies
Jason Roy
Zander de Bruyn
Tom Maynard
Matthew Spriegel
Gareth Batty
Chris Schofield
Yasir Arafat
Stuart Meaker
Jade Dernbach

12th men: Tim Linley, Gary Wilson

I've got a couple of issues with that squad. Firstly I think the side we put out last week was bowler-heavy, of the 11 men on the field it was only Davies, Maynard and Roy who don't bowl, and even Maynard's been known to turn his arm over. There is an argument that with de Bruyn in the side (who bowled excellently against Leicestershire) there's no need to pick three all-rounders to bat at 6, 7 and 8. There's enough decent bowling in that lineup to bowl 56 overs, and its entirely possible that Scotland may well not even last 40, although to be fair to them they did bat the overs at the Oval.

My second issue is that Wilson, who is so woefully out of form and consequently not likely to play, is selected ahead of Harinath, or Rory Burns, who have looked in decent nick recently. I'm a converted fan of Wilson but he can't buy a run at the moment.

We ought really to have more than enough about us to beat Scotland, they didn't look anywhere close to beating us at the Oval where we won with 7 overs to spare and 7 wickets in hand. The bowling wasn't very threatening and Josh Davey aside their batting wasn't particularly strong either. That said the last thing we need right now is a slip-up against perceived weaker opposition to disrupt this run of form, and we should not forget that Scotland ran Warwickshire close not so long ago.

Four CB40 wins from four would be an outstanding start, but lets not get carried away, we still have to play all of Warwickshire, Durham and Northants twice, none of which will be easy games. All the more reason to bank two points tomorrow.