Durham Diary

The report pointed out that as Killeen's 12 wickets had cost 50 apiece in the championship it was not surprising he had been left out. But as luck would have it when Durham were finally in a position to drop him, along came a day which would have suited him well.

Blignaut's 11 no-balls that day confirmed his rustiness after the troubles in Zimbabwe, and I suspect my comments touched a nerve because of the problems Durham have had with overseas men this season.

They are quite rightly opposed to the madness of two overseas players per county, but the majority of counties are in favour so it will continue. And when others have two Durham feel they must follow suit in order to compete.

But they must be spitting blood when they work out the cost of having Shoaib Akhtar, Reon King and now Blignaut - it will not be less than £100,000 - and question what value they have had from their outlay.

It can be argued that Blignaut's presence for one month is holding back Liam Plunkett's development and Gavin Hamilton's rehabilitation. Blignaut may yet have an impact as he obviously has talent. But as he's only here for a month and clearly needed the first ten days to shake off the rust, is it worth it?

The cricket management team make the decisions about overseas players, with the board rubber-stamping them. Once new chairman Clive Leach's feet are more firmly under the table perhaps he'll want to be more closely involved.

FOR a batsman to carry his bat through an innings is quite rare, so for Durham skipper Jon Lewis and Yorkshire's acting captain Matthew Wood to do it on successive days with neither getting anywhere near a century was remarkable.

Wayne Larkins did it for Durham against Gloucestershire at Gateshead Fell in 1994, scoring 158 out of 305, otherwise only Lewis has managed it. He scored 158 out of 251 against Kent at Darlington in 1997 and the following year made 70 out 158 against Lancashire at Riverside, although on that occasion Durham batted a man short because Nick Speak was injured.

His 35 last week was the lowest score made by anyone carrying his bat against Derbyshire, beating the 37 made by Louis Hall for Yorkshire out of a total of 96 at Derby in 1885.

THE third successive three-day home defeat means in it is now ten weeks since Durham have played on a Saturday, and the next two are blank.

But you can ink in Saturday, August 14 because the match against Somerset at Riverside starts on the Friday. This week we have a Tuesday to Friday match at Grace Road, then a day's rest followed by a totesport League match against Nottinghamshire at Cleethorpes.

Durham have now been to most of the venues used by the first-class counties, but it's their first trip to Cleethorpes and Arundel Castle remains a sad exception.

WE were rather surprised when a book entitled 100 Durham Greats landed on the sports desk this week. It has been written by someone called Matthew Appleby, with whom I am not familiar, and first reactions were that it would be good mickey-taking material.

There have been other books about Durham written by people with no connection with the county - notably Ralph Dellor's 1992 effort - which have been sloppily researched. However, this does not appear to fall into that category as Appleby has even spoken at length to Lance Cairns, who has some interesting things to say about his former teammates.

Cairns features because only 21 of the 100 belong to the first-class era, which creates the strange situation where David Boon and Ian Botham are preceded by Simon Birtwisle.

Botham may be the greatest, but whether he gave great service to Durham is debatable, whereas former Sunderland and Durham City batsman Birtwisle was no more than a good Minor Counties player but gave 20 years' service to Durham.

Cairns says of Birtwisle: "If you had a toff in your side, he was the toff. Riddell tried to talk posh, though he wasn't, but Birty had a bit of background about him."

It's a pity that the blurb put out by the publishers, Tempus, carelessly refers to England's fastest bowler without naming him, then refers to one of Durham's early batting greats as Charles Young Addison, when his name was Adamson. I suspect the author deserves better than that.

Compiling lists of 100 Greats of this and that is all the rage, of course, and they are always open to argument. I would question the inclusion of Martin Speight ahead of Chris Scott, John Glendenen ahead of Paul Parker and cannot for the life of me work out how John Wood got in. It says he left because he was disillusioned by David Boon's departure and a management reshuffle, when we all know he went to Lancashire for the money. He is quoted as saying: "I will always be grateful to Durham for giving me a chance." And so he should be.

100 Durham Greats is priced £12.99 and is available from Tempus Publishing, Stroud (01453 883300).