AFTER the banquet came the fast food, and Durham were so quick that the 4,200 spectators had hardly a moment to savour the tastiest of last night's Riverside morsels

A visitor from another planet would be totally perplexed by the week's events at Chester-le-Street, with the ground's inaugural Test being followed by the introduction of Twenty20 cricket.

There was little of the expected crash, bang, wallop, except when Nicky Peng was in full cry during an innings of 49 off 29 balls, which put Durham well on the way to overhauling Nottinghamshire's 157 for seven.

They won by six wickets with five balls to spare and skipper Jon Lewis said: "It was an excellent performance. The ground fielding and catching were very good, which supported some good bowling, and the batsmen carried it through well.

"The whole point of the competition is to bring new faces in and it looked like a lot of young people were here. Hopefully now they've seen a Durham win they will be back."

Peng has totalled 104 runs in nine championship innings this season, but this competition looked tailor-made for him as he made room to strike a series of imperious blows through and over the covers.

He also picked up Andrew Harris for six over mid-wicket and while he was putting on 73 in seven overs for the second wicket with Vince Wells Durham were coasting it.

Then both were needlessly run out in the tenth over, but Ashley Thorpe and Gary Pratt quickly got over the hiccup and when Thorpe drove a straight six in taking 12 off the 15th over from Stuart MacGill only 29 were needed.

Pratt was bowled for 18 having an unnecessary heave, but Lewis helped Thorpe complete the task, the left-hander finishing unbeaten on 38.

That this was cricket but not as we know it was underlined by Thorpe's dominance of the expensive MacGill. In the longer form of the game he would probably treat the Australian Test leg-spinner with too much respect and suffer the consequences.

Durham were not in the least handicapped by choosing to bat second on a perfect sunlit evening, when most of the fans must have felt cheated that the action was all over 24 minutes faster than the advertised 2hrs 45mins.

Given the usual over-rates in four and five-day cricket, it was expected to be a tight squeeze for teams to bowl their overs in 75 minutes, with a penalty of six runs per over for failure to do so.

But Durham managed it with 11 minutes to spare. They didn't bowl a wide and held three superb catches through skipper Jon Lewis, Ashley Thorpe and Peng.

Lewis, in fact, took three catches as he marshalled a slick performance in the field, in which they restricted Nottinghamshire to only one six.

Fears of a lager lout element tarnishing the game's image did not materialise, and with fewer children than hoped for the crowd was far from boisterous.

Although it was expected that the purists would boycott the event, a lot of the usual suspects were there and applauded politely when Neil Killeen began proceedings with a dot ball to visiting captain Jason Gallian.

The second was the sort of yorker which is expected to feature prominently, which Gallian was content to dig out before driving the third, a full toss, to long-off for a single.

Durham had obviously decided to bowl a full length on off stump as the two men allowed outside the circle were at third man and long-off.

Four came off the first over, including a leg bye, then former England left-hander Usman Afzaal slogged at Ian Hunter's first ball and skied a catch to Lewis at extra cover.

Two balls later Guy Welton edged low to Vince Wells' left hand at slip and it looked as though the catch had stuck. But the ball dropped out as Wells hit the ground.

Killeen opted to come off a short run off the third ball of each of his opening three overs, but his second attempt brought the first boundary as Welton drove him wide of mid-on for four.

Two balls later Gallian drove the first of his seven fours wide of short extra cover's right hand as ten came off the third over to take the total to 16.

Only two came off Hunter's second over, but from that point onwards the runs flowed. Only six came off Mark Davies' opening over, the seventh, but his attempts to bowl the yorker length resulted in too many half-vollies and full tosses and his other three overs cost 31.

Wells, bowling for the first time since his back injury, also had problems locating the right length as he conceded 39 off his four overs.

But at least he had the consolation of three wickets, starting with the dangerous Kevin Pietersen, who had clubbed a flat six wide of long-on off Wells' first ball.

The 6ft 4in South African had also greeted the off-spin of Nicky Phillips by reverse sweeping him for four, but after making 25 he drove a catch to Davies at long-on.

Gallian reached his 50 in the 13th over and two balls later was badly missed by Phillips at mid-wicket, the ball going through his hands for four.

England Under 19 star Bilal Shafayat also had an escape when he skied Davies to deep mid-wicket, where Gordon Muchall lost the ball in the sun.

But neither miss was too costly. After making a sprightly 18 Shafayat tried to chip Phillips over Thorpe on the edge of the circle at wide mid-on and the fielder back-tracked a few paces before leaping to take a one-handed catch.

Wells returned to bowl the 18th over and Gallian drove him to long-on, where Peng ran in to hold an excellent catch by his bootlaces.

Then Gareth Clough clipped Killeen to Lewis and in the final over the captain took the best catch of the innings when he made a lot of ground under a steepler at deep extra cover to see off wicketkeeper Wayne Noon, deputising for the injured Chris Read.

Paul Franks was left undefeated on 29, made off 19 balls.