Leicestershire have suffered a major injury blow ahead of their return to County Championship action against Hampshire at the Ageas Bowl tomorrow.
County will be without seam bowler Nathan Buck, who tops the club's wicket-taking chart with 42 to his name.
Buck has looked back to the form which earned him an England Lions call earlier in his career and appeared to be on course to take 50 wickets in the season for the first time.
However, the 23-year-old has been ruled out of the trip to the south coast with a foot injury.
Alex Wyatt comes into the squad as a potential replacement, although slow left-armer James Sykes could figure alongside off-spinner Jigar Naik if County feel the pitch will offer more to the spinners than the seam bowlers.
On the plus side, Leicestershire will have Josh Cobb back in their first-class side after recovering from the broken thumb he sustained in the Royal London Cup at the end of last month.
Cobb will slot back into the middle order and is likely to take on the captaincy again.
County have four games remaining this season – three away from Grace Road – and know if they can put in a good performance against second-placed Hampshire they can finish the season positively and give themselves a chance of climbing off the foot of the table.
There has been no lack of good performances with bat and ball this season, but it has been a failure to string them together in four-day matches that has prevented Leicestershire winning games.
"We've got total focus on four-day cricket now," said Leicestershire director of cricket Phil Whitticase.
"We know we can pick up decent momentum if we get off to a good start.
"There has been an improvement in our championship cricket this season but we have not been able to produce the wins that are our objective."
Hampshire have lost just once so far this season in the Championship and are second, 25 points behind leaders Worcestershire.
However, with only the top two being promoted, they will have one eye on third-placed Surrey, who are eight points adrift but have played a game more.
The hosts have a prolific batting line-up led by James Vince, who already has 1,200 runs in the bank, while Will Smith is knocking on the 1,000-run door with 955 to his name.
Left-arm seamer James Tomlinson leads the bowling attack with 37 victims to date, although Hampshire are without overseas player Kyle Abbott.
The South African has taken 36 wickets this season but is on international duty with the Proteas.
