It was back to the serious business of Championship cricket for Yorkshire today in their promotion tussle with second-in-the-table Worcestershire at New Road.

Yorkshire went into the game in fourth spot but they have a match in hand on all the teams around them and a win would set them up nicely for the second half of the season.

It is exactly a month since their last match when they clung on bravely for a draw against Lancashire but today's team has a slightly different look about it with the out-of-form Michael Lumb replaced by fellow left-hander Joe Sayers, who is making his first Championship appearance of the summer.

Ironically, Lumb made a courageous 68 in the Roses clash but that now seems a long time ago and he endured a miserable Twenty-20 Cup campaign before being left out of the last game against Leicestershire.

Sayers, an Oxford Blue, has been itching to get back into the side after doing so well in the Championship towards the end of last season when he formed part of a successful opening combination with Phil Jaques.

Yorkshire's director of cricket David Byas said: "It is always a difficult decision to leave a player out but Joe has forced the issued by scoring prolifically for the Second XI over the past few weeks.

"We all know that Michael is capable of scoring a lot of runs and I am sure he will do that in the Second XI and soon be pressing hard for his place back.

"But he is an England 'A' player and a potential Test batsman and as such he should have been scoring centuries for us over the past few weeks rather than 20s and 30s. I want him to start contributing in a bigger way than he has been doing recently."

This will be Matthew Hoggard's last game for Yorkshire before joining up with England for the Ashes and the better he can do for his county the more equipped he will be to put Australia under pressure.

Several Yorkshiremen at New Road will have a vested interest in Worcestershire winning this match against their native county.

Since Tom Moody left to take charge of Sri Lanka, Bradford's Steve Rhodes, now retired as the club's wicketkeeper, has taken over as director of cricket. And in the absence of captain Vikram Solanki, who was England's first substitute in the historic one-dayer at Headingley yesterday, another Bradford product, Gareth Batty, is leading the side.

In addition, two other Bradford-born players are included in wicketkeeper James Pipe, and fast bowler David Wigley, whose father, Canon Max Wigley, is Yorkshire's chaplain.

Yorkshire from: Wood, Sayers, McGrath, Jaques, Harvey, White, Dawood, Dawson, Bresnan, Kruis, Hoggard.

Worcestershire from: Peters, Moore, Hick, Smith, de Bruyn, Mitchell, Batty, Pipe, Shoaib Akhtar, Kabir Ali, Malik, Wigley.

Updated: 09:59 Friday, July 08, 2005