DURHAM hope to have Mark Davies fit to return in their next championship match against division one’s bottom club, Worcestershire, starting at Riverside on June 30.

First he will play in a threeday second team match against Hampshire at the Durham University ground starting today.

There is a chance that Durham could be short of two or three players for the Worcestershire game as both England and England Lions will be playing at the time.

England are to play Warwickshire at Edgbaston in an Ashes warm-up, starting on July 1, a week before the first Test at Cardiff, while the Lions face the Australians at Worcester.

It has been a frustrating two months for Davies, who needed ankle surgery after returning from the Lions’ tour to New Zealand in March.

Of the English bowlers currently playing who have taken more than 100 first-class wickets, no-one has a better average.

The 28-year-old seamer’s 232 wickets have come at 21.04 and his elevation to the Lions squad last winter was designed to discover how he would fare against good batsmen on flat Indian pitches.

The question remained unanswered because of the Mumbai hotel bombing, and the frustration which has dogged Davies’ career returned after he had briefly impressed in New Zealand.

He had to return home a few days early because of the latest in a litany of injuries which have held him back, starting when his right lung repeatedly collapsed.

After it happened for the eighth time in a pre-season match at Old Trafford in 2003 he had an operation which cured the problem and the following year he was the first bowler in the country to 50 championship wickets, nine ahead of his nearest rival.

Having reached the landmark in the tenth match his season was ended by a side injury, and much the same happened the following year as a stress fracture of the back cut him down in the 12th match with 47 wickets under his belt.

“I’ve had four stress fractures,”

he said. “After I recovered from the last one I started working with the sports scientist at Middlesbrough Football Club, Chris Barnes.

The sort of exercises he gave me were unheard of in cricket at the time, but they are quite common now.

“There was a lot of medicine ball work, all designed to build up my core strength and I still have routines I do every day to maintain that.

“The ankle injury was very frustrating. I had taken wickets on flat pitches in New Zealand and felt the winter had gone well for me. I wanted to hit the ground running this season with a big Test series coming up.

“I felt a bit of a niggle at the end of last season, but I thought that was all it was and I wasn’t going to let it get in the way of my chance with England Lions.

“But it got steadily worse through the winter and by the end of the second Test in New Zealand I was in a lot of pain.”

There has always been a question over Davies’s effectiveness on bland tracks. He topped the national first-class averages last season with 41 wickets at 14.63 and he also had the best figures with eight for 24 against Hampshire at Basingstoke. But 30 of his wickets came in three games, two of which Durham lost.

“Playing in India for England Lions was going to be important for me to show what I could do on flat pitches,” he admitted. “There was a danger that if I did well in New Zealand people would say it was because the ball nibbles around there.

“But it didn’t. The first Test was a high-scoring draw in Queenstown and I took four for 54 in 29 overs. I also got four wickets in the first innings in the second Test, but I was really struggling by the end of it.”

The injury meant Davies returned home early for the second time over the winter, having done no more than practise during the week in India.

“We were in Bangalore when the bomb went off. It was all over the news when we went down to breakfast and we were just told to stay in our rooms for 24 hours. They weren’t exactly palatial, but I was sharing with Liam Plunkett, who could entertain himself in a shoebox.

“We went home for three days then all the bowlers were sent to Abu Dhabi, where we trained and practised with the England team every day.

“I learnt a lot over the winter through bowling at better batsmen. I always try to be as effective as I can every time I play. I don’t hold anything back, which might be one reason why I’ve been injured so much. But I thought I’d got over that because I’ve been OK for the last two seasons.

“It makes this injury all the more annoying. But I’m trying to be positive. I would rather have had the opportunity with the Lions than not and there should still be plenty of cricket left this season when I get back.”