Shoaib Akhtar looks like being fit to return for Worcestershire at New Road today as Steve Rhodes' men look for the crucial victory they need to get them back into County Championship promotion contention.

The Pakistani fast bowler has missed his side's last two Championship matches, having come back from the Asia Cup with a recurrence of an old knee condition.

But Rhodes is hopeful that the Rawalpindi Express will be back on the rails over the next four days against a struggling Leicestershire side who, but for dismal Derbyshire, would be bottom of the Championship.

"Fingers crossed, we'll have Shoaib back in the team," said Rhodes. "He's got a slight knee problem which swelled up when he played back to back matches out in South Africa.

"But he's had an injection to reduce the fluid and we're confident he'll be right."

As to who Shoaib might come in for, Rhodes will wait on fitness reports on several other members of his bowling attack before naming his team, notably spinner Gareth Batty, who missed the weekend defeat to Lancashire with a badly bruised thumb.

"It's a problem Bats has had for a while," said Rhodes. "But he aggravated it taking that catch at Old Trafford in the floodlit game last Wednesday night. And we've also got to look at the fitness of the fast bowlers before we decide who plays. It's nothing unusual to find them all nursing a few knocks at this stage of the summer."

Rhodes certainly wants everyone fit and well and firing on all cylinders and looking for revenge for Worcestershire ' s defeat to Leicestershire two months ago.

Grace Road was, unquestionably, where this season all started to go wrong for Rhodes' men.

In his first game at the helm after taking over as coach from Tom Moody, Rhodes watched in horror that mid-June Saturday afternoon as his side somehow failed to knock off 141 runs to beat Leicestershire side they had out-played for the previous three days.

Such a landslide defeat was a massive blow to confidence. And it not only brought Worcestershire's encouraging run of results over the first half of the summer to a halt, but sowed the seeds on three more County Championship defeats.

With skipper Vikram Solanki and vice captain Gareth Batty both away on England duty that week, Graeme Hick had been restored to the leadership of the Worcestershire team. But much has changed since. And Hick's own slump in form since early June has left him lucky to keep his own place.

Having suffered perhaps the most alarming of all the county's individual hiccups, the great man did at least put a stop to that run of four successive Championship ducks with his second innings 24 at Blackpool before being caught behind off a nasty lifter.

But it has still been his worst-ever sequence of form in 22 years with Worcestershire. And Rhodes acknowledges that it was important simply for his old mate just to get time at the crease.

"He saw Saturday's second innings knock as effectively having a net out in the middle," said Rhodes. "And, in that respect, it was good that he stayed there for 45 minutes and worked his way back to a bit of form.

"It took a very good ball on a wearing pitch to get him and we are still confident that he's got a big score just around the corner."