Middlesex Head Coach Richard Johnson has named a squad of fourteen to take on the Kent Spitfires on Friday night at Lord's, after a week away from on-field action.
Just one change is made to the squad that narrowly lost out to the Sussex Sharks at Lord's a week ago by four runs, with Thilan Walallawita dropping out of the group.
That last encounter, result aside, saw the kind of performance that the coaches have been looking for from the side, when so much went right with both bat and ball, as Middlesex fell agonisingly short in their run chase, just failing to chase down Sussex's total. The side can take plenty of confidence from their performance however, with progress clearly being made, and they can consider themselves extremely unlucky not to get their first win of the campaign under their belts.
Once again, experience within the opposition ranks proved very telling, as Ravi Bopara, Shadab Khan, and Tymal Mills all had a big influence on last week's result at Lord's. Collectively the three Sharks' stars have almost 900 T20 appearances to their name, compared to just 543 appearances across the entire Middlesex starting eleven!
Tomorrow night's opponents come to Lord's with a record of two wins from seven played, with one of those wins coming last time out, when Daniel Bell-Drummond's 89 off 55 balls was enough to secure victory against Hampshire. Their other victory came in their very first appearance of the campaign, when they beat Gloucestershire in Canterbury, with the side suffering five straight losses in between.
Kent have been in County Championship action this week, and the side were on the wrong end of a confidence sapping defeat at the hands of Surrey, when for the majority of the game they outperformed our London rivals, only for Surrey to overhaul them on the final day, making Kent chase leather for nearly two days in the field.
Surrey's run-chase of 501, the second highest in County Championship history, saw Kent toil in the heat for almost 150 overs, which will have certainly taken it's toll ahead of their return to Blast action tomorrow.
Kent Spitfires' campaign has seen two familiar T20 stalwarts leading the run-scoring again for them, as Daniel Bell-Drummond and Joe Denly lead the way, with 247 and 175 runs respectively, whilst Grant Stewart and Michael Hogan are their leading wicket-takers, with 12 and 11 respectively.
Middlesex will be looking for a repeat performance of that against Sussex, as we look to get those elusive first points on the board...
The squad of fourteen is as follows:
