ANY offspring who took the Durham marketing department's bait and lured their dads to Riverside for a Father's Day treat yesterday would have been sorely disappointed.

Scotland provided the opposition in the Yorkshire Bank 40 match and there were a few from north of the border in a crowd of 2,400.

But there were more peahearts than bravehearts in the Saltires' ranks as they subsided for 91 in 23.3 overs and Durham won by seven wickets in 12.5 overs. The match was over by 5pm, occupying less than half of the scheduled playing time.

Although they haven't always been involved, it is ten years since Scotland were first invited into the 40-over competition. There has rarely been much evidence of improvement because when they have put up a fight the runs have usually come from an overseas player such as current captain Preston Mommsen.

He went first ball yesterday, as did ex-Warwickshire staff man Calum MacLeod. The three others who made ducks lasted a total of ten balls between them, including former Durham player Moneeb Iqbal. He batted at six, which is higher than he went in for Richmondshire during his season as their professional.

Scotland chose to bat and the top scorer with 30 was New Zealander Tom Latham, who has played in eight one-day internationals and is the son of former Test player Rod Latham.

The 21-year-old left-hander is currently playing club cricket for South Shields and scored a century for Durham seconds last week.

He turned Chris Rushworth's first ball nicely off his toes for four yesterday. But in the next over Freddie Coleman shaped to drive Graham Onions and edged to Phil Mustard.

All went reasonably well while Richie Berrington was helping to add 30 for the second wicket. But then he skied Mark Wood to long leg, where Ryan Pringle ran in to hold a good catch.

With the total on 39 three wickets went down in five balls. MacLeod gloved a leg-side catch to Mustard, Mommsen hooked straight to long leg and Iqbal was bowled by Wood.

After hitting three fours in his 49-ball innings, Latham must have realised he would soon run out of partners and was sixth out when he lofted a catch to mid-off.

The bowler was Wood, who said afterwards: "I've played with him in the seconds so we had a bit of banter when I got him out. He's a really good player and we certainly weren't going to take Scotland lightly.

"This win tops off a great week. We took a lot of momentum into the game after beating Warwickshire on Friday. Now we've got a few days off before playing Hampshire in this competition on Saturday. That's going to be a really big game."

The competition is to be revamped next season, reverting to 50 overs to comply with one-day internationals. Scotland will not be involved and it looks as though they have already thrown in the towel after losing all six games to date this season.

The Northern Echo: Scott Borthwick
Scott Borthwick was one of three home batsmen to get out chasing the modest total

There were three wickets each for Onions, Wood and Paul Collingwood, who took the last three in nine balls, which summed up the Scots' woeful efforts.

For the second successive YB 40 game, acting captain Mark Stoneman didn't call on Pringle to bowl, nor did he get to bat against an attack which would not have looked out of place on a village green.

The experienced Gordon Drummond was not called upon as four medium pacers trundled away and it was only through lack of motivation that Durham lost three wickets.

Perhaps preferring to spend the rest of Father's Day with his family, Mustard lofted a catch to mid-off after making 15.

Stoneman survived a simple chance to cover on five and reached 22 before he was lbw to Gordon MacLeod.

It was 67 for three when Scott Borthwick edged to slip, but Ben Stokes clattered an unbeaten 17 off ten balls to complete the job with Collingwood.