Middlesex's First Team Coach, Richard Johnson, has named a 14-man squad for tomorrow night's clash with South Group leaders Somerset in the Vitality Blast, with Josh De Caires coming in, named in the squad for the first time this season, with John Simpson missing out.
We head to Taunton off the back of two disappointing defeats at home, at Merchant Taylors' School in Northwood to Gloucestershire and Glamorgan, and will certainly look back on missing out on the opportunity to beat the former of these two opponents as one that got away!
Against both sides there were plenty of signs that Middlesex can be a force, however missed opportunities in both games cost us dearly.
As a result, we remain in search of our first win of the campaign, and they don't come much harder than a trip to Somerset, to take on a side that has won all four of their opening clashes in this year's competition.
Taunton remains the scene of our highest ever Blast run chase however, when we ran down Somerset's massive target of 226 in 2019 to win by six wickets, incredibly with three overs to spare!
We'll be looking to channel that kind of performance again tomorrow to give ourselves a chance of going toe to toe against one of the competition's in-form sides this year.
The manner in which Joe Cracknell and Skipper Stephen Eskinazi went about chasing down yesterday's huge target against Glamorgan will give us plenty of hope that we're moving in the right direction, and with the pair putting on almost 150 for the opening partnership last night, at a strike rate of almost 200, there'll be looking for more support down the order to maintain that momentum throughout the innings.
In all four games to date in this year's campaign we've been guilty of letting good starts with the bat slip away, with the loss of wickets stifling our momentum, although our approach with the bat has been positive - we just need to maintain this throughout the length of the innings to start turning these solid starts into winning totals.
Tomorrow's opponents have been in blistering from this year in the Blast, steamrollering their way past Hampshire, Sussex, Glamorgan and Kent, and they sit proudly on top of the South Group table with a one hundred percent record.
Tom Banton and Kohler-Cadmore have been Somerset's most prolific batters to date, with 138 runs (at an average of 34.5) and 132 runs (at 44.00) respectively, although when compared to Middlesex's leading run-scorers, of Cracknell (137 runs at 34.25) and Eskinazi (145 at 36.25) there's little to separate the two sides.
It's with the ball however that the statistics are more telling, as Somerset have Ben Green, Lewis Gregory and Matt Henry all on 7 wickets, Craig Overton on 6, and both Peter Siddle and Roelof van der Merwe on 5, whilst Middlesex's leading wicket-taker is Blake Cullen with 5, followed by Tom Helm with 4.
Middlesex will need an all-round performance with both bat and ball tomorrow to get things up and running, and will be looking to turn in a complete performance.
We have named the following squad for the encounter:
Somerset
Middlesex
