BOTH Mitch Claydon and Liam Plunkett struggled with their direction but suddenly produced absolute beauties to bowl Ben Smith and Gareth Batty.

Both wickets were needed to justify Will Smith’s decision to put Worcestershire in as Smith had made 33 and Batty had put on 57 for the sixth wicket with Ashley Noffke.

The Australian, batting at No 6, continued to defy Durham and was on 41 at tea, when the visitors were 167 for six.

Noffke, who has just quit Queensland after 11 seasons and is to play for Western Australia, batted at eight during his brief spell with Durham in 2005. But he has made two first-class centuries back home and scored 89 at Worcester against Sussex three weeks ago.

After new ball pair Callum Thorp and Claydon failed to make the breakthrough, Mark Davies struck with his ninth ball on his first appearance of the season following his ankle injury.

Coming on at 15-0 after 12 overs, Davies opened up with a maiden then had 19-year-old Dutch international Alexei Kervezee caught at second slip by Michael Di Venuto.

Plunkett was very wayward in his first few overs, but improved once Daryl Mitchell lost patience and edged a poor shot to Phil Mustard after making 13 off 59 balls.

Just before lunch Dale Benkenstein came on and was immediately cut for two fours by Smith before his fifth ball was edged by left-hander Moeen Ali to Plunkett at third slip.

Two wickets fell with the total on 80. Smith groped forward down the line of middle stump to a ball from Claydon which left him to hit the top of off, then left-hander David Wheeldon drove wide of off stump at Thorp and edged to Di Venuto.

Plunkett removed Batty with a very similar ball to the one which bowled Smith, except that this one sent the off stump flying.

Kabir Ali struck some lusty blows in reaching 18 at tea, and Worcestershire still had wicketkeeper Josh Knappet to come. He scored 100 not out for Oxford University against Durham three years ago.