THE clash of Queensland teammates Ashley Noffke and Martin Love could play a central role in Durham's four-day match starting at Northampton today.

Only Dean Jones has a better first-class batting average for Durham than Love, who made 2,718 runs at 57.82 in his three seasons with the club and also hit their two highest first-class scores of 273 and 251.

For Northants this season he is averaging 67, but Durham coach Martyn Moxon said: "We know all about him and so does Ashley. We hope to get him early because if he gets in he can be dangerous."

Having lost Graeme Swann to Nottinghamshire, Northants have not been as reliant on spin as in recent seasons, although off-spinner Jason Brown has taken 18 championship wickets.

Durham are hoping not to find a dry, dusty pitch so they don't have to gamble on Graeme Bridge, who travelled with the squad yesterday but is still having back trouble.

It's a remarkable statistic that in bowling out the opposition in every innings so far this season - Worcestershire batted only once two weeks ago because of the weather - only one of the 130 wickets captured by Durham has fallen to spin.

Of bowlers who have taken ten or more wickets, Durham have four of the top five seamers in the championship averages, led by Mark Davies with 31 wickets at 13.9 and Steve Harmison with 27 at 14.5.

Then comes Worcestershire's Matt Mason, followed by Noffke and his temporary replacement Mick Lewis. In the list of all bowlers Muthiah Muralitharan features in third place and Ashley Giles in sixth.

Liam Plunkett also travelled with Durham but has not recovered from his heel injury and the plan is for him to have treatment at Northampton in the hope of being fit for Sunday's totesport match against Sussex at Arundel.

After Love the most prolific batsman for Northants has been former England Under-19 star Bilal Shafayat, who was released by Nottinghamshire. He has 471 runs in ten innings, while Gordon Muchall is second to Mike Hussey for Durham with 449 from the same number of knocks.

Hussey will be disappointed to miss the visit to his former county, for whom he scored three triple centuries.

He guided them into division one two years ago, but they came straight back down and have not won any of their six games, lying third from the bottom.

There has been a lot of turmoil under the management of South African Kepler Wessels, who brought in a number of Kolpak players, but the only success has been South African all-rounder Johann Louw.

Durham (from): D M Benkenstein (capt), J J B Lewis, N Peng, G J Muchall, N J Astle, G R Breese, P Mustard, A A Noffke, M Davies, M L Turner, N Killeen, G D Bridge.

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