ALL eyes will be on Paul Collingwood, Stephen Harmison and Nicky Peng this season to see how they have benefited from winter work which has gone far beyond simply batting and bowling.

While Collingwood's success with the England one-day squad is well-documented, Durham's two England Academy boys have been through a life-changing regime in Adelaide.

Often starting at 6.30am, they have experienced everything from yoga to lessons in dealing with the media. But will it improve their cricket?

If the benefits are obvious it will be a mixed blessing for Durham. It might help them to achieve their aim of division one status in both the four-day and one-day game, but then their prize assets might be in line for England contracts next year.

That would seriously curtail their availability for Durham, who are seeing the benefits of putting the accent on the development of local talent even before an indoor school has been built.

Martyn Moxon goes into his second season as Durham coach with a squad of 23, of whom 17 are from the North-East and only skipper Jon Lewis and Simon Brown are over 30.

While this speaks volumes for Durham's youth development, greater rewards will need to be seen this season in terms of climbing the County Championship.

Winning promotion in the one-day league and reaching both knockout quarter-finals cushioned the blow of finishing next to the bottom in the championship last season, Durham's worst finish since 1997.

It was said that Moxon was unhappy about threatened cutbacks on the playing side because of ground expenditure prior to his shock departure from Yorkshire, and Durham will need to see improvements if he is not to face a similar situation again.

It is hoped that the much-needed indoor school will finally be built at the Riverside next winter as Durham continue to develop the facilities which will host Test cricket next year.

But the annual profit fell from £56,023 in 2000 to £13,117 last year and this is something they will be anxious to reverse.

The squad has increased by three, which goes against the general trend of slimming down county staffs in line with suggestions that there are far too many run-of-the-mill players earning a living from the game.

Signing Ashley Thorpe, a 27-year-old Australian who has a residential qualification, might go against Durham's home-grown policy.

But at least he has played for seven years in the local leagues, while other counties are snapping up imports who have EU passports simply on the strength of having an Italian or Greek grandparent.

Tomorrow's visitors Middlesex, for example, have signed two South Africans and an Australian on this basis.

Thorpe is a hard-hitting left-handed batsman whose right-arm medium pace might also be used in one-day games.

The other four additions to the staff - seamer Mark Davies, all-rounders Gordon Muchall and Chris Mann, plus wicketkeeper Phil Mustard - are all products of the academy.

Davies has been upgraded from a development contract and has already made a big impression, and while competition is healthy there is every chance that the surfeit of seamers will have to be trimmed at the end of the season.

Only those who can extract some life from increasingly flat Riverside pitches will survive in championship cricket.

It is now acknowledged that the pitches provide no excuse for batting failures and Moxon is determined to eradicate Durham's perennial failing of having too few batsmen averaging over 30.

Only Queenslander Martin Love (50.52) and Collingwood (48.9) topped that mark in the championship last season, which was a poorer record than any other county.

Love arrived this week for a second season and Collingwood added one more year to the remaining year on his contract at the end of last season, but insists that does not mean he is keeping his options open.

"I see so much potential here," said the 25-year-old winner of three Man of the Match awards in England's winter one-day programme. "If we keep all these players together we can become a big force in the game."

The highlights of last year's one-day success were the three glorious centuries made by Peng, England's captain at the Under-19 World Cup.

Injuries kept key bowlers Simon Brown and Neil Killeen out for most of the season, and restricted Harmison and Nicky Phillips. But this created opportunites for Nicky Hatch, James Brinkley and Graeme Bridge to make an impact, and Danny Law to rediscover his bowling talent following his move from Essex.

Another big plus was the brilliant wicketkeeping of the members' Player of the Year, Andrew Pratt.

With Brown eager to prove his return to fitness and form, Durham will look to the left-armer's swing, coupled with Harmison's pace, to take early wickets.

After heavily favouring seam in its formative years, there are increasing signs of the Riverside taking spin, and Phillips and Bridge recently spent two weeks in Adelaide working with the former Australia off-spinner Ashley Mallett.

Among the young batsmen who need greater returns is Michael Gough, who has also been working on his off-spin.

Love will also hope for more centuries after converting only one of his 13 championship half-centuries last season into three figures.

Entering his 11th season of first-class cricket, Jimmy Daley needs to repay the faith which has been shown in him, otherwise Gary Pratt will leap ahead of him in the pecking order.

Lewis goes into his second season as captain hoping for more consistent four-day form after topping the one-day averages last season, when his unbeaten 76 off 66 balls against Worcestershire clinched promotion in the final match.

But he would look back on his run of nine lost tosses in the middle of the four-day programme as a big obstacle to progress. Every game tended to be similar as Durham had to field first with a weakened attack.

A chance to bat first and top 400 would go a long way towards propelling Durham up the table, and given the growing chorus of disapproval for the County Championship the sooner they get back into division one the better.