Cricket: Harmison Fails to Inspire Durham

Gathered like excited twitchers on the boundary, the gaggle of photographers hoping for a rare shot of Steve Harmison bowling dispersed in disappointment when Durham's captain Dale Benkenstein won the toss and chose to bat.

Those who hung around, however, did not have long to wait. Twenty-four hours earlier the outfield had been almost entirely under water, and though the groundstaff performed miracles to enable this match to start only an hour late, the constant rain meant time preparing the wicket had necessarily been limited.

Rana Naved and the Sussex seamers found plenty of movement from the start, Mushtaq Ahmed's googly might have been sanskrit as far as the Durham middle order's ability to read it was concerned, and shortly before 4.30pm Harmison was running in from the Finchale End.

He did run in, too, though with the sort of wind which whips the tops off the piles of sawdust at his back, he didn't have much option. Unfortunately for Durham, neither Harmison nor Graham Onions, both of whom were faster than any of the Sussex bowlers, found anything like as much movement, mainly because they struggled to land the ball on a length.

Harmison's first three overs were particularly wild and in between ducking the bouncers, the Sussex openers Richard Montgomerie and Carl Hopkinson picked off enough of the looser deliveries to give the visitors a start from which, even when both were dismissed with the score on 57, they should go on to build a match-winning lead. Hopkinson did edge one steepler from the England fast bowler to first slip, but Gareth Breese put the difficult high chance down.

With Sussex's two Pakistan international bowlers having already taken 46 wickets between them in the previous four championship games, Durham's batsmen knew they had cause to be wary. Even so, Naved made immediate inroads, trapping John Lewis leg before and having Gordon Muchall caught behind. Jimmy Maher's resistance ended when he was good enough to get an edge to a Luke Wright delivery which meant by the time Mushtaq began work after lunch, Durham were already deep in trouble.

That none of the remaining batsmen could pick him almost goes without saying - Gary Pratt, Breese, Phil Mustard, Benkenstein and Harmison all groped hopelessly - although Harmison did hit Mushtaq for consecutive boundaries, the second a reverse swipe of such effrontery that even the bowler could only smile. Knowing it was simply a matter of time, he could afford to.