DURHAM have named Mark Davies and Liam Plunkett in their squad to face division one’s bottom club, Worcestershire, at Riverside over the next four days.
The champions go into the match with a 12-point lead over second-placed Nottinghamshire, who entertain Lancashire this week then do not play again until Durham visit Trent Bridge on July 15.
At that point Nottinghamshire will have two games in hand, so Durham will be anxious to at least double their lead by then over the only team who currently look capable of deposing them.
Replacing Graham Onions and Steve Harmison, however, is a tall order as they have captured 68 of the 105 championship wickets taken by Durham this season.
They are on England Lions duty against the Australians at Worcester, starting tomorrow, but as well as Davies and Plunkett Durham can call upon Mitch Claydon to plug the gap.
Despite being the county’s third highest wicket-taker in the championship this season, with 12, he was left out of the win at Edgbaston as the pitch was expected to favour the spinners. Gareth Breese failed to take a wicket, however, and stands down today.
Callum Thorp has also been wicketless in the last two games and developed a side injury at Edgbaston, so it’s possible that Ben Harmison will come in as the fourth seamer for his first championship appearance of the season.
Durham have resisted the temptation to play Australian Twenty20 specialist David Warner, preferring to hand an opportunity to Kyle Coetzer in the absence of Mark Stoneman with his thigh injury.
Worcestershire are without three top batsmen in Vikram Solanki, Steven Davies and Stephen Moore, who might help to swell the crowd playing for England Lions on their home ground.
But the selection will do nothing for the county in their bid to avoid going straight back to division two, and Durham might also point to the iniquity of Ryan Sidebottom being available to play for Nottinghamshire.
Although Sidebottom is in the Ashes squad, he has not been selected for either the Lions or the full England side to play Warwickshire this week. Among those expected to plug the gaps in the Worcestershire team is 19-year-old Alexei Kervezee, who opened the batting for Holland in their World Twenty20 win against England.
The visitors will also include Queensland seamer Ashley Noffke, who played for Durham in 2005.
Durham (from): W R Smith (capt), M J Di Venuto, K J Coetzer, G J Muchall, D M Benkenstein, I D Blackwell, P Mustard, B W Harmison, L E Plunkett, C D Thorp, M E Claydon, M Davies.
■ Anthony McGrath has told his ailing Yorkshire players that they are battling for their futures at the club.
Yorkshire’s season is careering towards rock bottom after early exits in the Friends Provident Trophy, the Twenty20 Cup and no win in the County Championship.
And it sunk to a new low on Sunday with an embarrassing defeat against Derbyshire in their final Twenty20 north division match, in which they collapsed to 127-9 in pursuit of 165 for victory.
“If it doesn’t start to improve before the end of the season, we are going to have to make massive changes ahead of next year,” said the furious captain. “Players are playing for their futures.
“We can’t keep going over the same things over and over again. Things have got to change very quickly.”
Batting has been a problem all season, and shows no signs of being rectified.
“We seem to have collapsed like a pack of cards, and I don’t know why that is,” continued McGrath. “To put in performances like we have in the past week is disappointing.’’
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