WHEN Durham visit the Three Tuns Hotel tomorrow they will doubtless talk of adding to their three tons this season against Yorkshire this week.

The visit is intended to mark the club's 125th anniversary as it was at a meeting in the Durham City hotel on May 23, 1882, that the county cricket club was formed.

The Durham squad to face Yorkshire at Riverside on Wednesday will have photographs taken at the hotel tomorrow and the wish for one of the younger batsmen to chip in will no doubt be repeated as the tons so far have come from Michael Di Venuto and Dale Benkenstein.

Given that Durham now have three players in the England team it could be asked why, in 110 years prior to achieving first-class status, only eight Durham-born cricketers had played for their country.

Among them was Bob Willis, who was whisked away from his Sunderland birthplace when he was a few weeks old, while most of the others earned only a handful of caps between them.

Strictly speaking, only Paul Collingwood of the current trio of Test players was born within the county. But with Graham Onions also on the fringe of the squad, while Riverside has become a fully-fledged Test venue, Durham have achieved an enormous amount in the last 15 years.

Durham were always big fishes in the Minor Counties, from the time when they shared the inaugural title with Norfolk in 1895. Perhaps they didn't break into the first-class game earlier because no-one took their chances seriously enough.

There were 16 people present at the 1882 meeting at the Three Tuns - two each from Darlington, South Shields, Durham City, Stockton, Whitburn, Gateshead Fell, North Durham and Durham School.

It was decided to ask Sunderland to stage a match against Northumberland on June 12 and 13, which Durham won by four wickets, thanks largely to the captain, Arthur Mewburn, who was born in Darlington but played for Sunderland.

He batted at No 11 in the first innings as Durham followed Northumberland's 99 all out with 188, then took seven for 59 as the visitors totalled 162, leaving Durham to score 74 to win.

This time Mewburn opened the innings and while the rest of the top seven mustered 15 between them he remained unbeaten on 47.

IT'S a measure of how Riverside pitches are improving that the match against Kent was the first occasion at the ground on which both sides achieved maximum batting points. Durham made 407 and Kent 400, while the closest to a maximum in the past was in 1998 when Glamorgan arrived with a depleted attack and Durham's Melvyn Betts broke down in his first over.

David Boon scored a century as Durham made 396 then Glamorgan replied with 486, with Tony Cottey making 123.

There have been only three previous occasions on which Durham have topped 400 at Riverside, starting with 470 for eight against Gloucestershire in 2002, when Andrew Pratt made his top score of 93 and his brother Gary weighed in with 66.

The following year Martin Love's Durham record score of 273 was the cornerstone of their 515 against Hampshire, then in 2005 Gordon Muchall and Dale Benkenstein contributed centuries to a total of 505 against Essex.

DURHAM are not using any outgrounds this season, but they will visit three on their travels - Horsham and Blackpool for championship matches and Guildford for a 40-over game.

Their one previous trip to Blackpool was for the 2001 C & G Trophy quarter-final, which they lost by seven wickets, but they have played a championship match at Horsham before, way back in their inaugural first-class season in 1992.

The match featured the new England coach, Peter Moores, but he made only one batting at No 6 as Sussex successfully chased a target of 340 to win in 65 overs, getting home off the last ball.