FOR Graham Onions to pass 50 first-class wickets well before the season’s halfway stage is an astounding achievement. He is 20 clear of the field nationally – Steve Harmison is now second with 31 – and has raised the possibility of reaching 100.

It’s a rare landmark these days, especially for pacemen. Mushtaq Ahmed managed it twice in the current decade, but the last seamer to achieve the feat was Andrew Caddick with 105 in 1998. The leading wicket-taker in the country last season was Hampshire’s Chris Tomlinson with 67, two ahead of Harmison and Yorkshire’s Adil Rashid.

Of course, if Onions plays in the Ashes series he will suddenly find wickets harder to come by, and if he does become a Test regular he will miss Durham’s next six championship games. Hopefully, he will be available for the final four in September and will still have enough stamina to keep Durham on course to defend their title.

Onions’ figures of seven for 38 in the second innings at Edgbaston were the second best of his career behind the eight for 101 he took on the same ground two years ago. He is now only three short of his best tally of wickets in a season, the 54 he took in 2006.

IT already looks like being a repeat of last season’s showdown between Durham and Nottinghamshire for the title, following Lancashire’s defeat by Hampshire.

On paper, Lancashire look as strong as any side, but to lose so badly to such a moderate them must raise serious concerns about their flimsiness. It is also interesting that, starting with their visit to Riverside, they have lost two successive matches with Freddie Flintoff in the side.

This begs the question about the difficulty of fitting a superstar into a team which has been going well. Obviously we want him to play in the Ashes and he needs the match practice, but were Lancashire right to grant his request to bat at three against Hampshire?

Durham might have faced the same difficulty had England gone out of the World Twenty20 in the group stages, which would presumably have freed Paul Collingwood to play at Edgbaston. It will be interesting to see if he is available for T20 action this week, although his presence in the home match against Leicestershire didn’t do Durham any good.

The way things are going, a tricky decision looms when Shivnarine Chanderpaul arrives in August. Either Gordon Muchall will have to make way, despite his encouraging form, or Will Smith will have to move up to open in place of Mark Stoneman.

Getting back to the title chase, Somerset are now third and as Durham forced them to follow on 474 runs behind at Taunton it is difficult to see them as serious challengers. Like most other counties, they have a powder-puff attack compared with Durham’s.

IT was good to see Steve Harmison simply shrug off the wide at Edgbaston which took a similar line to the first ball of the 2007 Ashes series in Australia. Too much was made of that at the time, with all the suggestions that it set the tone for the series.

On this occasion it was to a right-hander so rather than end up in the hands of second slip it comfortably eluded the despairing leg-side dive of Phil Mustard, and Harmison was able to smile about it.

“It tried to bowl it from wide on the crease and landed in the foot-hole Boyd Rankin had dug,” he said. “I’m surprised it didn’t go wider.”

Harmison also had some words of comfort for his 2005 Ashes colleague Simon Jones. A while ago there was an outside chance that Jones would make his comeback for Worcestershire in the next championship match at Riverside on June 30.

But he has been ruled out for the season and Harmison said: “I really feel for him. I helped to stretcher him off when he first suffered his injury in Adelaide and I’m really disappointed for him. But he’s a fighter and I’m sure he’ll be back.”