Middlesex have named a squad of fourteen to face Glamorgan in Cardiff this week for our latest Rothesay County Championship clash of the season.
This is the final fixture in this opening block of County Championship matches, before the four-day format takes a break to make way for the Vitality Blast, which gets underway on Thursday 29th May with the double-header clash against Sussex at Lord's.
For this week's clash against Glamorgan, there is one addition to the squad that was named for last week's clash against Leicestershire at Lord's, with Tom Helm added to the Middlesex seam attack for this one.
Middlesex's last outing resulted in a disappointing defeat to Leicestershire, as the top of the table side wrapped up a convincing seven wicket win inside three days to maintain their unbeaten start to the season. After two evenly matched days across days one and two, few could have predicted how quickly the game would turn on day three, as Leicestershire took control and dismissed Middlesex for just 143 before knocking off the runs to claim the win.
Middlesex will head into this one looking to brush that defeat off and put it behind them, and they'll be targeting a repeat of their performance against Glamorgan at Lord's a month ago, when they excelled in all disciplines to secure a nine-wicket victory, in a game where all plans came together and they dominated the game throughout.
Glamorgan, after a winless opening four games and since that defeat to Middlesex, have gone unbeaten, and head into this clash in decent form having won their last two encounters convincingly, beating previously unbeaten Kent by an innings and 161 runs, and then Northamptonshire by 8 wickets last time out.
This week's visitors form has been spearheaded by the batting form of both Ben Kellaway and Colin Ingram, who come into the game on 481 and 451 runs respectively, with averages of 68.71 and 55.37. They are followed by four other Glamorgan batters who've surpassed 300 runs this term, with Kiran Carlson (374), Zain ul Hassan (323), Chris Cooke (312) and Sam Northeast (308).
With the ball, the principal Glamorgan threat comes from the seam attack, with Timm van der Gugten and Sri Lanka international Asitha Fernando both currently sat on 17 wickets, with the medium pacers of Andy Gorvin picking up 16 wickets. Ben Kellaway leads the way for Glamorgan's spin attack, with his left-arm spin yielding 10 wickets to date.
Middlesex will be looking to bounce back, and bounce back strong, as last week's defeat to Leicestershire saw them drop to fifth in the Division Two table, although Derbyshire's failure to win against Lancashire last week ensured they didn't create a gap on the sides sitting below them.
As it stands, Middlesex sit just 17 points behind Derbyshire in second, with Glamorgan and Gloucestershire sitting in third and fourth spots, both on 75 points.
Victory in Cardiff would put Middlesex's plans right back on track to ensure we head into the break from four-day cricket with our ambitions for promotion to Division One still very much attainable.
Middlesex have named the following fourteen-man squad for this week's clash:
Glamorgan Men
Middlesex Men
