WEST Indian star Shivnarine Chanderpaul will make his final appearance for Durham in the championship match against division one's bottom club, Worcestershire, starting at Riverside today.

Durham had hoped the left-hander could stay a little longer, but he has been summoned to join the West Indies squad's preparations for next month's Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa.

It means Chanderpaul will have played in only three championship games, scoring 12 and 16 not out in the win against Warwickshire, and 81 and 29 in the draw against Surrey.

He did, however, play a major role in the Friends Provident Trophy final with his innings of 78.

Durham will be left with only one official overseas player in Michael Di Venuto for the final three games at home to Sussex and away to Lancashire and Kent. As he is suffering from a suspected hernia, they will be praying that Di Venuto's injury does not flare up like Steve Harmison's.

Although he is now fit, Callum Thorp had the same problem and has not appeared in the first team since the first two games of the season, which included a victory by 241 runs at Worcester after Di Venuto carried his bat for 155.

Durham have slipped to fifth in the table, 30.5 points behind leaders Yorkshire with two games in hand. If they can take the maximum of 22 points from this match they will be very much in the title hunt going into their next game at Blackpool.

That starts on Thursday next week against a Lancashire side who have lost Muttiah Muralitharan but have drafted in Indian batsman V V S Laxman.

As they are now top of the second division in the NatWest Pro40 League, Durham have hopes of a treble. Their two remaining games in the 40-over competition are against the bottom two clubs - Derbyshire (away) next Tuesday and Glamorgan (home) September 15.

Mark Davies has been recalled from his Nottinghamshire loan and although he is suffering from a hamstring injury he is expected to be fit for the Lancashire match.

Durham: (from): D M Benkenstein (capt), M J Di Venuto, M D Stoneman, K J Coetzer, S Chanderpaul, P Mustard, B W Harmison, O D Gibson, L E Plunkett, P J Wiseman, G Onions, G J Muchall.