PICTURE the scene. It’s the Riverside dressing room ahead of one of the most crucial sessions of the season, and rookie skipper Will Smith is about to deliver his team talk.

To his left sits Paul Collingwood, former England oneday captain and one of the most successful all-rounders the country has ever produced.

To his right is Steve Harmison, seasoned England international and arguably the best strike bowler in the country.

And straight ahead sits Dale Benkenstein, a player who entered the history books last year as the first Durham captain to lift the County Championship.

A nervous silence would be understandable, but as he prepares to take charge of his first game as Durham skipper, Smith is confident he would be more than capable of holding his own.

And if his orations are as authoritative as his batting, the opener could well prove an inspired choice as Benkenstein’s successor.

“A lot of people have asked whether I’ll be daunted taking over so many experienced players,” said Smith, who has previously captained Durham University, British Universities and Bedford School, where he skippered England batsman Alastair Cook in his formative years.

“But I see that as a positive rather than a negative. I’d much rather be in a dressing room with players like that than be captaining a group who are not prepared to express themselves and draw on their experiences.

“I’m taking over a group of highly-talented players who are going to want to help me out. They are the kind of guys who will put any individual considerations aside for the good of the team.

“It’s fantastic to have them, and we’re all going to be pulling in the same direction because we all have the same aim. We want to do even better than we did last season.”

Given that Durham claimed their maiden LV County Championship last summer, that is hardly going to be easy.

The Championship crown was accompanied by semifinal appearances in both the Twenty20 Cup and the Friends Provident Trophy, but Smith insists that further progress is possible over the course of the next five months.

“It’s going to be tough, but we know we can improve on what we achieved last season,”

he said. “I know we got there in the end, but a lot of people have forgotten that we didn’t really look like being county champions until the final day of the season.

“We lost some games we should have won – especially early in the season – and it was by no means a flawless campaign, so there’s definitely room for improvement in the four-day stuff.

“The Twenty20 is obviously a bit of a target because Durham have never played in the final of that competition, and there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be competitive in the other two competitions as well.

“No one is going to say they’re going to win all four, but with the squad we have, there’s no reason why we shouldn’t be looking at claiming two trophies in a season for the first time.”

As well as harbouring ambitions for the team as a whole, Smith is also setting a number of personal targets as he attempts to marry the demands of captaincy with the demand for runs at the top of the order.

Smith might have ended last season as Durham’s Player of the Year, averaging more than 50 in the County Championship, but he started it with an appearance for the Second XI at Milton Keynes.

He accepts he cannot afford to take his run-making for granted, but insists the increased responsibility of captaincy will not have an adverse effect on his form.

Having watched Andrew Strauss’ batting improve following his promotion to the role of England skipper, the 26-year-old is hoping to produce a similar response to his own elevation.

“It’s no use me saying the captaincy is not going to be an issue in terms of my batting, because if I say that, it inevitably will be,” said Smith, who spent the majority of the winter in Sydney.

“But, if anything, I think becoming captain will make me a better batsman. I can’t be demanding things of other players if I’m not doing them myself.

“Taking over the captaincy will place more demands on me, but I can’t let that affect the way I prepare for my batting.

I still have to do all the little things I was doing last season, and make sure I’m ready whenever I go to the crease.

“In the past, my batting has tended to improve whenever I’ve been captain. I think I enjoy the added responsibility – I certainly don’t retreat into my shell.”

Smith’s first test will come in this week’s traditional curtain- raiser between the reigning county champions and the ECB, with Durham’s LV County Championship campaign due to begin with a home game against Yorkshire on April 22.

The former Nottinghamshire opener held a number of meetings with head coach Geoff Cook during the pre-season tour of South Africa, and while personnel and tactics will change during the course of the season, the general thrust of his captaincy will remain the same.

“We know where we want to go, and we’re agreed as to the best way of getting there,” he said. “There aren’t going to be any massive changes to how the team operated last season, but I have my own ideas and there’ll inevitably be a bit of tinkering here and there.

“The most important thing is that we carry on doing everything we’ve been doing well over the last couple of years.

“You don’t become county champions for nothing, and we have to remember what our strengths are.”