Worcestershire Director of Cricket Steve Rhodes has kept faith with the players on duty in the two-day LV = County Championship defeat by Warwickshire for the clash with Middlesex at Uxbridge beginning tomorrow.
Rhodes has named the same 12 players originally selected for the Bears game – the 11 who actually played plus all-rounder Ed Barnard.
Worcestershire are currently bottom of the table but there several teams separated by only a handful of points and a second victory of the campaign would quickly change the picture.
Rhodes is hoping the momentum in the squad gained from back to back wins in the NatWest T20 Blast this week will be carried forward into the longer format of the game.
He said: "There will not be a lot of changes from the last match. They deserve a chance to repair the work that was probably undone in that Warwickshire game. They will get another chance.
"We have got to get cracking in the Championship and hopefully this momentum (from T20 cricket) will carry us forward because we deserve to have got a little bit more out of our four-day season than where we are (in the table) – but it will come.
"I really do think it will come. It's the first of two games we've got against Middlesex and I'd like to hopefully get two wins against the same opposition. That would be brilliant, that's what I'd love to do and Somerset, we could do that.
"We've got to think positive. One of Ian Botham's greatest assets to this club was that he taught us all to be very positive and upbeat and confident.
"Hopefully we can go out there and have a really good game against Middlesex."
Worcestershire (from):
Daryl Mitchell
Richard Oliver
Moeen Ali
Tom Fell
Alex Gidman
Joe Clarke
Ben Cox
Joe Leach
Jack Shantry
Charlie Morris
Saeed Ajmal
Ed Barnard
