CAPTAINING a first-class cricket side used to be easy. You helped pick the starting XI, called heads or tails at the start of the match, and then spent the next four days trying to lead your side to victory.

The job needed a certain degree of talent and temperament but, beyond what happened on the field, a captain's job rarely extended beyond the odd social session in the members' bar and a quick speech at the end of season dinner.

Not anymore. Durham's season might have started with a three-wicket defeat to Hampshire last week but, for skipper Jon Lewis, the current campaign began as soon as the final ball of last season had been bowled.

And, since then, he has assumed the role of chaperone, travel agent, secretary, clerk and chauffeur. In fact just about the only thing he hasn't done much of over the winter, is play cricket.

"The job of a captain and a coach has changed massively in the last few years," said Lewis, who became Durham skipper in September 2000 after joining the county from Essex three years earlier.

"For me, it means the phone never stops. You can't just walk away and go home because there's always something else that needs to be done.

"You have to be able to put the game down and walk away from it every once in a while otherwise you'd go mad. I need to turn my phone off every now and then just to make sure that the day comes to an end.

"I spend a lot of my time now thinking about how I can get substitute overseas players in, talking to agents and working out who's going to be available because of the international schedule.

"I've spent a lot of time in the last couple of months looking at players and studying fixture lists and you don't really want to be doing that as the start of the season is drawing nearer."

And that studying of fixture lists is still going on. When Durham signed South African opener Herschelle Gibbs and Pakistan pace bowler Shoaib Akhtar as their two overseas players for this season, Lewis was under the impression that both would be available for the opening weeks of the campaign.

But, after missing last week's game at Hampshire, neither will be in the side to face Notts this afternoon.

"The international schedule changes regularly and we're left to pick up the pieces," said Lewis. "Some nations have a habit of changing their international fixture list at very short notice and that causes problems.

"We knew Herschelle was going to go to Sri Lanka, but we didn't know they were going to change the dates of that tour and extend it a bit. That means he's going to be missing more than we had hoped.

"South Africa have invented their own Twenty20 competition now as well and that's going to take place in April. They didn't have that when we signed Herschelle - it simply didn't exist.

"But it meant we suddenly had to look around for a batsman to cover him, and we were lucky that Marcus North was in the region after having played for Gateshead Fell for a couple of years.

"The Pakistan-India tour also changed in the last few weeks and that means Shoaib's missed the start of the season as well."

It isn't just overseas players that are conspicuous by their absence either. Paul Collingwood and Stephen Harmison have been two of the county's most important players for the last couple of seasons.

But their success has seen them elevated to the England Test and one-day squads and, consequently, while the domestic season gets into gear, they are out in the West Indies representing their country.

Both have been awarded central contracts by the ECB so, while Lewis has not given up hope of being able to call upon them from time to time, the chances are that their appearances at the Riverside this summer will be rare indeed.

"When I first started, players weren't playing anything like as much international cricket," said Lewis.

"The international game is so big now that it occupies up to ten and a half months of the year.

"If you're playing regular international cricket then you're hardly going to be available to play county cricket at all. Yorkshire have alerady accepted that Michael Vaughan's a non-starter for them all season.

"Paul and Stephen are centrally contracted players so, if they play for us, it's because Duncan Fletcher wants it. I've got no say over that at all.

"That's a shame, but the profile of the club is hugely important and seeing Durham players succeed on the international stage can only be a good thing.

"When Stephen goes out and takes 7-12 in a Test match it raises the entire profile of the club massively. The phones were going mental when he did that, because everyone wanted a bit of Stephen Harmison.

"The two things go together. Raising the profile of the club helps the players achieve things and, by achieving things, they then go on to raise the profile of the club at the same time."