STEVE Rhodes has kept faith in his mis-firing Worcester-shire team, opting to take the same 12-man squad into today's LV County Champion-ship Division One meeting with Lancashire that were comprehensively beaten by Yorkshire last week.

The injury-hit County bowling attack were pummelled for 521 by the White Rose batsmen at Headingley before the out-of-sorts batting line-up subsided for less than 150 in both innings.

A further blow to Worcestershire's chances of picking up their first Championship win of the season comes with the news that Sri Lankan spin wizard Muttiah Muralitharan makes his eagerly-awaited return to Lancashire colours.

The magical spinner, who has taken 152 wickets in just 20 first-class games for the Red Rose county during spells in 1999, 2001 and 2005, is included in a 13-man squad following his belated arrival in Manchester after the World Cup.

Although all-rounder An-drew Flintoff misses out due to England commitments, seamers James Anderson and Sajid Mahmood are available after being left out of the first Test against West Indies that starts at Lord's on Thursday.

Batsman Stuart Law is sidelined by the calf problem which has kept him out of one-day action this season, but Dominic Cork is in contention for a recall after being drop-ped for last week's rain-affected draw against Hampshire.

For Worcestershire, left-armer Ray Price, who did not play in the defeat by York-shire, may return if the pitch favours spinners.

Despite the likes of new recruit Moeen Ali and Daryl Mitchell putting pressure on the batsmen and youngsters Richard Jones and Stuart Wedge keen for the chance to impress in the bowling department, director of cricket Rhodes has given his backing to the current XI.

He said: "We face tough opposition today in Lancashire. They came second in Division One last year, but we are determined to sort out our bad start to the season and do something about it.

"The lads believe in each other and there is absolutely no reason why we can't level off our bad results this week.

"Then we can start to rise again, get some positive results and pick up our season just like we did last year.

"We will be using the same squad of 12 players who were involved in our last Champion-ship game at Headingley."

Worcestershire opted to stay up north after the two games against Yorkshire and spend some time together as a squad. Rhodes added: "We had a rest day yesterday and the whole team played golf - I felt it would be better to spend the time up here as a group rather than travelling back to Worcester for one day before coming back up."

Lancashire (from): Chilton, Anderson, Chapple, Cork, Croft, Hodge, Horton, Keedy, Loye, Mahmood, Muralitharan, Smith, Sutton.

Worcestershire (from): Jaques, Moore, Solanki, Smith, Kabir Ali, Davies, Batty, Sillence, Hick, Malik, Nel, Price.