Blast Preview: Kent Spitfires v Bears

Woakes and Stone set for Bears Blast return to Edgbaston

Birmingham Bears welcome Chris Woakes, Adam Hose and all their Hundred stars back into the squad for their Vitality Blast quarter-final against Kent at Canterbury, 7pm start.

Woakes and Hose are fit and available and rejoin the group along with Jake Lintott, Danny Briggs, Chris Benjamin and Sam Hain who return from Hundred duty.

That means the Bears have some nice selection headaches as they target a victory which would take them into Finals Day at Edgbaston on September 18.

Kent, who topped their group in commanding fashion, will be favourites tomorrow evening but the Bears will go in with confidence high after finishing off their group campaign with two highly impressive wins under pressure.

It is a quarter-final showdown full of intriguing sub-plots, not least the pitting against each other of Bears batter Benjamin and Kent's Kiwi seamer Adam Milne who have just spent the last month as team-mates at Birmingham Phoenix.

For Benjamin, who has just signed a three-year contract with Warwickshire, that will be just another ingredient to a mouth-watering contest.

"Adam and I had a few jokes about it throughout the Hundred," Benjamin said. "I kept telling him I wanted to face him in the nets just to get used to his action. I only faced him a handful of times because the tournament was so busy, so we'll have to see.

"He is definitely one of the best, if not the best, white-ball seamers I have played with or against in my brief career. Fortunately, I have seen a little bit more of him than other players have but he is a very skilful bowler who can bowl 90 miles an hour and with some really good slower balls. So it will be good fun to come up against him.

The Bears are still without injured seamers Henry Brookes, Olly Stone, Olly Hannon-Dalby and Ryan Sidebottom as well as Dan Mousley who has been so unlucky to sustain a second fractured finger this season. But they still take a very strong squad south with Hose back in contention at the top of the order and Craig Miles and Tim Bresnan fit again to vie with Woakes for selection in the seam attack.

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Another intriguing element to the match is the lack of history between the two sides in T20. In the tournament's 18-year span, they have met just once, when Kent won by 42 runs in a quarter-final at Edgbaston in 2008.

The Bears would love to even the score on their T20 bow at Canterbury tomorrow.

Squad

Rhodes (C), Benjamin, Bresnan, Briggs, E.Brookes, Burgess, Hain, Hose, Lamb, Lintott, Miles, Pollock, Woakes, Yates.

How to follow

Tickets for the fixture have sold out.

Bears Members and supporters can also follow the Club from home via the Match Centre on edgbaston.com and through the Edgbaston app (available for free on iOS and Android).