WORCESTERSHIRE will take the same 12-man squad that drew with Gloucestershire at Bristol into their Liverpool Victoria County Champion-ship clash with Somerset at Taunton today (11am).

The pace bowling burden will once again rest on Zaheer Khan and Kabir Ali's shoulders as Nadeem Malik is still suffering from sore shins, while Matt Mason misses out after a family bereavement.

Left-arm pace bowler Stuart Wedge is also included in the 12-man selection.

New Road director of cricket Steve Rhodes said: "Nadeem had a check up on his shins yesterday and he is now set for exploratory treatment to determine what the problem is. With Matt, it is an unavoidable situation and completely understandable that he is not available."

Somerset sentenced Worcestershire to a 227-run home defeat in the County's first Championship game of the season, so Rhodes will be looking for revenge at the earliest opportunity.

Although Zaheer took 10 wickets on his County Championship debut against the West Country outfit, the New Road batsmen failed to put the runs on the board and former England pace bowler Andy Caddick claimed nine wickets to lead his side to a comfortable triumph.

Rhodes said: "The loss to Somerset at home early in the season hurt us badly and we will use that as our inspiration to try and beat them this time and get some revenge.

"The difference between the two sides now is that we have got a couple of batsmen coming right into form. Graeme Hick and Ben Smith have both just scored half-centuries and are looking good -- when you add this to the recent form of Phil Jaques, Steven Davies and Vikram Solanki we are optimistic we can carry on our run and keep getting big runs.

"Although the loss to Derbyshire effectively ended our participation in the Cheltenham and Gloucester Trophy, we will be treating each game as seriously as any other. There is a great deal of pride associated to playing for Worcestershire and we will be giving 100 per cent in every game we play."

Worcestershire: P A Jaques, S C Moore, V S Solanki (capt), B F Smith, G A Hick, S M Davies (wkt), G J Batty, R J Sillence, Kabir Ali, Z Khan, R W Price, S A Wedge.

Somerset have added former England seamer Richard Johnson to their squad for the visit of Worcestershire.

Australian batsman Cam-eron White continues to lead the side in the absence of England all-rounder Ian Blackwell who has been ruled out for the rest of the season with a shoulder problem.

Somerset are in the process of signing Australian Justin Langer as a replacement for Dan Cullen, who will be missing for part of the season, on Australia `A' duty.

Meanwhile, when Graeme Hick reached 34 not out in Worcestershire's second in-nings against Gloucestershire in this week's County Championship game, he reached a significant landmark.

The County stalwart became only the third cricketer -- after England Test batting legends Graham Gooch and Jack Hobbs -- to reach 60,000 runs, with 38,591 first class runs, 20,972 one day runs and 437 Twenty20 runs.

Hick has served Worcestershire for the last 23 seasons.