RICHARD Jones returns to the Worcestershire squad to face Glamorgan tomorrow after having to drop out of the Lancashire game at the 11th hour with a hamstring strain.

The County seamer picked up the injury minutes prior to the start of the rain-affected draw at Old Trafford and was replaced in the starting XI by David Lucas.

However, Jones is currently playing for the County second XI in a friendly against Somerset and is on stand-by to join the first team in Cardiff for the second LV= County Championship Division Two game of the season (11am).

New Road director of cricket Steve Rhodes said: “Richard has been playing for the seconds this week to prove his fitness and he can be recalled from that match to join the first-team squad.

“He just tweaked his hamstring in the warm-up at Old Trafford — he almost played, but felt he could injure it further in the game and that would have left us a bowler down for the game, so he put the team first and dropped out.”

Rhodes added: “Glamorgan are a really dangerous outfit. We will have to make sure we take our ‘A’ game and do just as well as we did against Lancashire, or even improve on that.

“If we do that, we will have every chance of beating them, but they do have a terrific amount of talent in their squad with the likes of Marcus North, Michael Hogan, Mark Wallace and Jimmy Allenby.”

Rhodes was impressed with the fighting qualities shown by his players at Old Trafford, even though the weather had the final say.

He said: “We can’t change the weather, but what we can do is try and repeat some of the things we did really well at Lancashire, such as keeping control with the ball for long periods.

“We felt we had a solid game and will look to improve on it.

“There were also good signs with the bat as we showed real determination and proved we can post a score with Moeen Ali, Daryl Mitchell and Gareth Andrew all getting half-centuries.

“Lancashire gave themselves a decent platform with some excellent batting from openers Paul Horton and Luke Proctor.

“We bowled well, but they also had two good players to follow with Ashwell Prince and Simon Katich getting runs too.”

Worcestershire (from): Mitchell (c), Pardoe, Moeen, Samaraweera, Kervezee, Pinner, Johnson (wk), Andrew, Russell, Jones, Richardson, Lucas, Choudhry.