THERE are several Durham connections in the mysterious case of Adrian Shankar, who made his Worcestershire debut against them and took no further part after injuring a knee in fielding practice. He has now been released after being exposed as a fraud.

Durham were one of several counties to whom he tried to sell himself last winter, but they probably needed to do no more than ask Will Smith for a reference.

A team-mate of Smith and Alastair Cook at Bedford School, Shankar apparently told Worcestershire he is 26 when he is actually 29 and it seems that was not his only departure from the truth.

Handed a two-year contract the week before the Durham match, he scored ten not out on the second day and suffered his injury the following morning. Already some local journalists had grown suspicious about the claims in a press release that he had enjoyed a prolific winter in Sri Lanka. No record of this could be found.

Shankar has played second XI cricket for Sussex, Worcestershire, Lancashire and Middlesex and former Durham wicketkeeper Chris Scott, the Cambridge UCCE coach, has become involved by claiming that his backing for Shankar in a Lancashire press release was fabricated.

Scott was quoted as saying Shankar was one of the finest young players Cambridge had seen since John Crawley. "I phoned Lancashire and made it clear that I'd never said anything of the sort," Scott said. "No-one at Worcestershire or Lancashire asked my opinion before they signed him."

Shankar made 143 in the Varsity Match of 2002 but Scott said: "The bowling was unbelievably bad. He was a poor player and there's no way I would have recommended him."

The relevance of his lies about his age is that, by claiming to be 26, Shankar slipped in under the threshold to qualify for the young player incentives handed out by the ECB to first-class counties.

The seriousness of Shankar’s injury remains unknown. We are unlikely to hear of him again.

THE more serious news to emerge at Worcester, at least as far as Durham scorer Brian Hunt was concerned, was the death of singer Kathy Kirby.

Wherever the scorers had shared Press facilities, such as at Canterbury or Scarborough, there was always talk of Brian’s liking for the glossy-lipped blonde.

“I’ve had texts and emails from all over the place,” he said on the day she died, aged 72. “I’ve now promoted Agnetha, from Abba, to No 1, followed by Hattie Jacques.”

FOLLOWING his stand of 273 with Will Smith at Edgbaston, Dale Benkenstein is now in first, second and third places in Durham’s list of best fourth-wicket partnerships.

His 250 with Paul Collingwood at Derby in 2005 has been relegated to second place, while third spot belongs to his stand of 226 with Shiv Chanderpaul at Worcester in 2009.

Despite being demoted from top spot for the fifth wicket by Gordon Muchall and Ian Blackwell putting on 247 at Worcester, Benkenstein features six times among the best three partnerships for each wicket.

His best remains the 315 he put on with Ottis Gibson for the seventh wicket at Headingley to save Durham from relegation in 2006.