Unchanged squad, but washout looms

Surrey are making the trek to Taunton, probably as I write but a cursory glance at the weather forecast for tomorrow suggests it might all be in vain.

Should they get a game in however, the same 14 man squad named for Monday's game with Essex has been selected, the squad and expected team is as follows:

Hamilton-Brown
Davies
Roy
De Bruyn
Maynard
Wilson
Batty
Ansari
Arafat
Dernbach
Nannes

Bench: Linley, Schofield, Spriegel

After Monday's impressive bowling and fielding performance, Adams may well go in with the same XI and I wouldn't be against that. However despite the performance there are still question marks. Wilson made a first ball duck and Spriegel came and went for just eight runs and then bowled a solitary over for 13 runs. Adams may feel that he can get more overs and as many runs from Gareth Batty. That said, Spriegel is excellent in the field - the area where we were streets ahead of Essex, so it's a tough call. That Ansari is more or less a shoo-in is a measure of his composure on debut.

Wilson has looked in very poor form for some time, almost since the start of the season in fact, but there is no other specialist batsman in the squad. It's possible Adams may think Schofield can offer more with the bat but I think that unlikely. An in-form Wilson will score runs in T20 and maybe they're just betting on something clicking with him.

Somerset come into this game on the back of two consecutive washouts at Taunton, but in between those they've recorded scores of 235, 90 and 225...so if that pattern continues they're due another failure. I can but hope. There's not much I can say about a batting lineup of Trescothick, Kieswetter, Trego, Hildreth and Buttler, plus the power-hitting of van der Merwe, that hasn't already been written or said. Mind you, I said that about the Essex lot too, and look what happened there.

Although there is likely to be no Alfonso Thomas, in Hussain, Kirby and Murali Kartik they still have a more-than-capable Twenty20 attack.

As the reigning T20 Cup runners-up Somerset are rightly seen as one of the best in the country and if the weather behaves it'll be a massive challenge for us. There is still significant pressure on the top 5 with the tail unlikely to add too many. The last three opening partnerships read 0, 2 and 1, both Hamilton-Brown and Davies will be after a big score. The performance against Essex showed that we are capable of beating very good sides. If they can maintain that kind of level of performance we'll run them very close.