Durham Diary

He attempted in The Daily Telegraph to compare Riverside's shabby peripheries with the chaos he alleges surrounded his first few days as a Durham player.

A few days later, in previewing the Twenty20 Cup, he wrote: "Who will be the first bowler to go for 60 off four? I'm glad it can't be me."

Perhaps not, but in Durham's fourth championship match in 1992 Northants had nine overs in their second innings to score 92 for victory at Stockton. Hughes went for 38 off three overs and the visitors got home off the last ball.

THE name of Bailey has long been associated with Durham cricket and the link continues through the club's marketing manager James Bailey.

It was not he, however, who took for seven for 52 for Newcastle against Blaydon last weekend, but his younger brother Jonathan, who bowls left-arm spin.

"But I took six for ten at Stocksfield the other night," added James. Who was he playing for? "I don't really know," he said. "It was an accountancy firm who asked me to guest for them."

John Bailey, father of James and Jonathan, was a Hartlepool all-rounder who captained Durham from 1968-71, played 99 times for the county and in 1967 won the Man of the Match award in a Gillette Cup tie against Nottinghamshire at Chester-le-Street, which Durham lost by 11 runs.

His father, Harry, also played for the county, as did John's brother, David, who went on to play for Lancashire.

While the elders in the family might be seen as traditionalists, James's job involves him in pushing back the frontiers and coming up with novel ideas about how to spread cricket's appeal.

"For the Twenty20 Cup I wanted to send a remote control car out with a plastic duck on the roof to escort a batsman off if he was out for nought," he said.

"The ECB looked at a lot of ideas, but decided they wanted to keep it as close to proper cricket as possible. We see this event as being like a glossy magazine with a sachet of shampoo inside - it's a taster."

The demands of the Test match meant the Durham marketing team did not have time to come up with the sort of gimmicks dreamed up by other counties.

Friday's visitors, Nottinghamshire, ran a male beefcake poster campaign featuring four players stripped to the waist and plugging the event as a "Girls' Night Out."

Unfortunately, one of the players - the Bishop Auckland-educated Chris Cairns - was injured after the posters went up and will take no part in the competition.

"We did leaflet drops and put up posters at all the local cricket clubs," said James. "We would have done a lot more but for the Tests, but there has still been fantastic demand - certainly much more than for the Benson & Hedges zonal matches."

AS I expected, Stephen Harmison's comment on Radio Five Live that Durham had put county cricket on the back burner while pursuing their international ambitions, did not go down very well.

"We hope we have re-educated Stephen to the fact that it was an unfortunate statement," said chairman Bill Midgley.

"There's not one shred of evidence to support his claim, except that we took a match to an outground, which we would probably have done in any event.

"We have said all along that the great advantage of having international cricket is that it will give us more resources to put into the county game.For example, it allows us to pay the higher salaries which people like Stephen Harmison will command."

DURHAM'S fears that the Lottery money they are due to receive towards building their indoor school might be scrapped have receded.

They have been promised £700,000 towards the £1.3m cost by Sport England, who have admitted that the Olympic bid and falling Lottery revenue will bring cutbacks in their funding.

"We were concerned that our project would slip back two years or be dumped," said Bill Midgley.

"But we heard from Sport England last week that they want more than one tender for the job and they are waiting for the tenders to come back.

"That's good news, and we are still optimistic that we will get a start in late summer."