Worcestershire will have Shoaib Akhtar spearheading their attack today when they visit Northamptonshire and bid to reignite their promotion campaign.
The Pears have slipped off the pace in Division Two in recent matches having turned winning positions into losses in their last two County Championship games against Leicestershire and Yorkshire.
Steve Rhodes, therefore, needs a fully fit Shoaib to help his side overcome a county who have yet to register a four-day win this season and the head coach is confident the Pakistan Test player is in good enough shape to inspire a victory.
"He could be a real impact player for us," said Rhodes.
"He is one of the best strike bowlers in the world and we are really looking forward to having him win games for us." The 29-year-old looked out of sorts in his last outing - a five wicket defeat to Glamorgan in the totesport League - bowling eight overs for 53 runs without a wicket.
And he has been struggling to overcome the calf problem that ruled him out of the Yorkshire match leading some to question his long term fitness.
Rhodes is standing by his man: "He has been a bit unlucky with injuries and I would not say we have had the best out of him yet but I have no doubt that we will." Anyway he has other things to worry about, namely Worcestershire's alarming last day failures in their last two Championship appointments.
Not that he is overly concerned, there certainly hasn't been any hand-wringing at New Road: "It has been a case of reminding the boys how well we played for three days in both of those games," Rhodes continued.
"We were in control having established a dominant position. All I need to do is reiterate how good we are." Worcestershire recall Steven Davies and Matthew Mason to a 13 man squad while Vikram Solanki, who returned to the side on Sunday after spending the Nat-West Series and Challenge with England, replaces Daryl Mitchell.
Meanwhile Northamptonshire have retained faith with the XI knocked out of the Twenty20 Cup by Somerset.
Monty Panesar makes way after last week's ten-wicket defeat to Essex, with Johann Louw retaining his place from Monday's Twenty20 team.
