Essex travel to Northampton tomorrow for their next County Championship match when they meet Northamptonshire but the visitors will be missing key players because of injury.

Nasser Hussain sustained a broken finger in the Test Match at Lord's against New Zealand and is likely to be out of action for three weeks, while Mark Ilott is recovering from a cartilage operation which means that he is unlikely to be fit for a month at least.

The absence of both players is a major blow. Hussain had led the county in each of their four Championship successes and had scored 435 runs in eight innings this season whilst left arm paceman Ilott had claimed 33 wickets thus far in the competition.

Additionally, there is a doubt concerning the fitness of former skipper Paul Prichard who is struggling to overcome ligament damage to a wrist and recently had the joint put back into plaster to speed recovery.

All this allows further opportunities for a number of fringe players to enjoy first team outings with Darren Robinson or Tim Hodgson the most likely to be drafted in as the replacement batsman, while Danny Law could be offered the chance to step into Ilott's shoes.

Robinson has endured a miserable season with just 199 Championship runs in 16 innings, but these figures belie his undoubted ability and having been dropped recently, hopes are high that he will have rediscovered his form after a spell of Second XI cricket.

Left-hander Hodgson is yet to play in the Championship this season, but has been scoring consistently in the seconds and may well be offered the chance of the number three spot in the batting line up.

With the two-divisional split to be introduced into the Championship next season, Essex are currently right on the cut off point, ninth, for qualification into the higher echelon in a league that sees eight teams currently separated by just seven points in the mid section.

Two good or bad results can have a dramatic effect on a county's final standing in the table.

Northamptonshire are languishing in 17th position with just one victory this season. They have also suffered a setback to their hopes with the news that captain Matthew Hayden will only be available for two further matches before he joins the Australian side bound for a tour of Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe.

Hayden is a colleague of Stuart Law in the Queensland side back in Australia and both will be vying for "top dog" status from this game.

Law has already reached 1,000 runs for the season and Hayden, after an indifferent start, has accumulated 745 runs.

Hayden will be anxious to leave his county with a flourish, although they will need to show more resilience throughout the side if they are to climb the table having suffered five defeats this year with a number coming after the side enjoyed a somewhat healthy position during the course of the matches.

An extra incentive for Essex is the quest to exact revenge for their NatWest Trophy defeat last month in a game that produced 563 runs but saw Essex beaten by five wickets.

Essex from: R Irani (capt), P Prichard, P Grayson, T Hodgson, S Law, S Peters, B Hyam, D Law, A Cowan, R Anderson, P Such, D Robinson, T Walton.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.