DALE Benkenstein was comfortably the best signing Durham ever made, while Paul Collingwood has been their most valuable homeproduced player.

As often happens when strong personalities are involved, it seemed there wasn’t room for both in the future management structure when there was some jockeying for position following Geoff Cook’s heart attack last summer.

Now suddenly Durham could be left with neither as Benkenstein’s decision to coach Hampshire came the day after Collingwood’s unveiling as England’s assistant one-day coach.

The latter is a temporary appointment, but the very fact that it has come about suggests he is earmarked for a permanent role.

While others, including Benkenstein, work their way through the various coaching badges, Collingwood has barely dipped his toe in the water.

It was, however, quite an achievement to help a previously hapless Scotland team qualify for the 50-over World Cup, enhancing the reputation he has gained from his captaincy.

He admitted when taking over the Durham reins in mid-2012 that it was not a position he had coveted. Yet he made a remarkable success of it.

They narrowly lost his first game in charge, making it ten without a win, but then won 14 of the next 20 to emerge as champions.

If a home-grown leader of a largely home-grown team could bring about such a transformation then the way forward had to be under him. But if England whisk him away Durham will surely regret not doing more to hang on to Benkenstein.

With Cook having made a full recovery, they could have left him as head coach until they saw how things panned out at the end of the coming season, when Collingwood hangs up his boots.

Jon Lewis now has the first team reins and deserves his chance after serving a lengthy apprenticeship. But for Benkenstein, Lewis’s appointment would have signalled that it was best to look elsewhere.

In playing terms it would have been a backward step to reinstate him in the team as he approaches his 40th birthday. Durham won the title without him last season, when he struggled for runs even before his injury in early June.

But there are few shrewder men in the game and Durham fans will be appalled if Hampshire now close the gap which has seen them trailing in Durham’s wake.

There has been little love lost between the sides since Durham thrashed Hampshire in the 2007 Friends Provident Trophy final, with Benkenstein leading them to their first silverware.

It’s not so much his decision not to return which is a shock as the move to Hampshire – in fact it’s the biggest pre-season shock Durham have had since Mike Hussey was unable to return for a second season as captain following promotion in 2005.

That was when Benkenstein took over and it was mainly thanks to him that they hung on by the skin of their teeth in division one, surviving by half a point after he shared a stand of 315 with Ottis Gibson in the final match at Headingley.

It was typical of a man who often bailed out Durham even after giving up the captaincy after leading them to their first championship title in 2008.

There are no cast-iron guarantees that he will make a good coach because the ingredients for success remain uncertain. In some cases coaches can do more than good, while as a batsman Collingwood is a classic example of someone who worked it out for himself.

Both he and Benkenstein are inspirational characters.

Durham have been lucky to have them both, but it’s regrettable in the end that they had to go their separate ways.