Lehmann-led Yorkshire send Durham bottom

After a century from Darren Lehmann, they batted on for seven overs after lunch at Riverside before declaring on 353 for nine, setting Durham a target of 535 to win.

At 23 for two the theory was about to become swift reality. But then Yorkshire dropped both Paul Collingwood and Marcus North, who shared a stand of 119.

Once that was breached, however, in a fine spell from Steve Kirby, the procession resumed and Yorkshire were able to claim the extra half hour with Durham on 189 for seven.

Five overs later it was all over, with Durham all out for 202 to lose by 320 runs and slip to the bottom of the table.

Off-spinner Richard Dawson took four of the last six wickets to finish with nine wickets in the match.

Durham's magnificent win at Taunton, when they knocked off 451, may have prompted Yorkshire to delay their declaration but it already looks a distant memory.

With half their championship programme gone, Durham now have nine days off and Collingwood is unlikely to be available for their next four-day game at Cardiff because of England one-day duty.

With chairman of selectors David Graveney on the ground, Collingwood took advantage of being badly missed on three to launch a counter-attack which brought him a season's-best 65.

Initially he continued to lead a charmed life. Richard Dawson almost had him two or three times and on 29 Collingwood all but played on to Craig White's second ball.

But there were also some excellent strokes as Collingwood and Marcus North took the score to 101 at tea, when there was the extraordinary sight of Kirby borrowing the groundstaffs' shovel to rectify a foothole problem at the Finchale End.

Shoaib Akhtar had problems with it in the morning, and both Kirby and Tim Bresnan stumbled in it. Otherwise the surface continued to be excellent.

Lehmann, dropped on two the previous evening, made his 20th championship century for Yorkshire in his 70th appearance and it was surprising to find that it was only his second against Durham as he rarely fails against them.

He also made a hundred in the Benson & Hedges Cup quarter-final at Headingley in 1998, plus 88 in the same competition in 2001.

Lehmann enjoyed two slices of luck - an inside edge off Mark Davies on 26 which just missed his stumps, and an edge through the vacant second slip area off Neil Killeen which took him to 50 off 62 balls.

He needed only a further 45 balls to complete his century and was rarely in the slightest difficulty, not even during Shoaib Akhtar's four-over burst at the start of the day.

With Yorkshire already 337 ahead, it took an early cover driven four by Lehmann to fire up the Pakistani and in the day's fifth over he bowled a bouncer which Andrew Pratt could not have reached had he been on stilts.

Lehmann has developed a style which involves some personal variation on the block-it-or-belt-it technique. The nearest he came to delicacy was in his cutting of Gareth Breese, while his improvisations included a sort of shovel shot off Davies which sent the ball soaring over square leg for six.

He hit two other sixes and 17 fours in his 120 before pulling Davies to deep mid-wicket, where Nicky Peng took the catch.

It was not the most satisfying of ways for Davies to claim the scalp, but it meant he became the first to 40 championship wickets this season and he was again Durham's most successful bowler with three for 51.

He did well to hold a low return catch in the day's third over to remove Michael Lumb, but White then played the sleeping partner in a stand of 141 with his brother-in-law.

They easily beat the previous sixth wicket record for Yorkshire against Durham of 85 set by Richard Blakey and Paul Grayson at Durham University in 1994.

Killeen beat White three times in one over, but remained wicketless as the Yorkshire captain soldiered on to make 31 before both batsmen fell with the total on 306.

White drove North to Breese at long-on just before lunch and with a lead of 491 he could have declared at the break. But he probably wanted to give Simon Guy the chance to build some confidence with the bat and the wicketkeeper made 21 before he tried to pull a ball from Shoaib which kept low and took out the middle stump.

That prompted the declaration and Jon Lewis took ten off Kirby's opening over before nibbling at a ball he could probably have left two overs later.

Guy took the catch and it became 23 for two when Gordon Muchall's attempted pull off Nick Thornicroft skied a catch to Lehmann at mid-on.

After his five-wicket haul in the first innings, Dawson was on in the 14th over and had Collingwood dropped by Phil Jaques at slip off his second ball.

On 28 North hit Dawson for a big six over mid-wicket, but was then dropped off White by Guy, diving across in front of first slip.

A sweep which positively flew to the boundary behind square off Dawson took North to 50 off 100 balls, then Collingwood bottom-edged a cut off the spinner just past his off stump for four to bring up the 100 stand in 25 overs.

His next attempt at the stroke was perfectly executed and took him to 50 off 83 balls, but then he suffered a painful blow in the orchestra stalls from Kirby.

This prompted North to try to shield him from the strike, but the switch to a more defensive approach proved fatal as North shouldered arms on 59 to a ball from Kirby which shot through low to hit his off stump.

Nicky Peng suffered the same fate as in the first innings, failing to get to the pitch of a turning ball from Lehmann and edging to slip.

Then Collingwood swept Dawson to deep backward square leg and the resistance crumbled.

* Darren Lehmann has been selected for Australia's forthcoming short home series against Sri Lanka and will play his last match for Yorkshire in the Championship clash with Leicestershire starting at Headingley next Friday.

Lehmann will return for the second time this season in mid-July and Phil Jaques will leave Yorkshire on July 16 to practice with his state side, New South Wales, but will be back with Yorkshire again when Australia arrive in England for the ICC Trophy in late August.

Meanwhile, Yorkshire's Australian all-rounder, Ian Harvey, continues to have treatment on his hamstring injury but he is expected to remained sidelined for the next three weeks at least.

"Ian's scan showed that he had suffered two tears and it will take some time for him to recover fully," said Yorkshire's director of cricket, David Byas.

"The extent of Ian's injury shows that we were wise to re-sign Phil Jaques to replace him for a while and Phil has continued to play magnificently for us."

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