Derbyshire v Leicestershire RLODC

Dilshan will be back in the Derbyshire team after a long home series against Pakistan

It's welcome back to Tillakaratne Dilshan for tomorrow and the remainder of the season.

The legend - a fairly apposite title - that is Dilshan replaces Hamish Rutherford, a player who let no one down in his stint at the club. We now need the Sri Lankan, undoubtedly one of the finest players to emerge from his country, to show the form that earned him that reputation.

No one would say that his form in the previous stint was vintage Dilshan. Even his runs against Lancashire in the televised T20 were scratchy and his CPL stint brought only 67 runs in four matches. Yet I understand that the player has had family concerns and any one of us who has been through such trauma will know how it can affect your everyday life.

Hopefully he is back to his best and can reproduce the form that made him one of the stars of the World Cup, because to progress to the knockout stages of this competition we need to win our last three games. All are winnable - we should have beaten Durham at Derby and we weren't far away from Worcestershire either. Given that tomorrow's opponents and the latter are bottom two in the group, at our best we really should be beating them. Then it will come down to that result, where? Down by the Riverside....humour me, old song, old joke...

The squad is largely unchanged, with Will Davis replacing England-bound Mark Footitt as the only change. The attack will be young and largely inexperienced, but there's only one way to get the latter and that is to play. Our squad:

Wes DurstonBilly GodlemanTillakaratne DilshanBen SlaterChesney HughesScott ElstoneWayne MadsenAlex HughesShiv ThakorTom PoyntonMatt CritchleyGreg CorkBen CottonWill Davis

Our visitors lost to Yorkshire today, leaving them with only a no-result point from four games. They have some good players, but we really should be beating such teams if we play at our best. Young the squad may be, but they are undoubtedly talented and need to show that.

If we concentrate, make no daft mistakes and work hard, we will be very much in the quarter-final mix this time tomorrow.

That'll do quite nicely, I think.

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Edited by Staff Editor