County Championship Second Division: Worcestershire 218 Durham 110-8

Durham set Shoaib Akhtar loose yesterday and anticipated the sound of broken stumps and battered bodies, followed by the bray of an unlikely promotion challenge. It has yet to turn out that way.

Shoaib did register his first championship wicket - that of Worcestershire's South African professional Justin Kemp - but he was largely overshadowed, first by his new county team-mate Steve Harmison but then by a Worcestershire pace attack which later in the day made shrewd use of a responsive pitch.

Stephen Moore, another Worcestershire South African, this time by way of Exeter University, can vouch for Shoaib's hostility; the clang of his helmet when he swayed into a leg-side bouncer was loud enough to send choristers rushing off for practice to the imaginary summons of the cathedral bells.

But Ben Smith clung on to make 73 from 129 balls, and Shoaib's frustration was evident in a mane-tossing succession of bouncers which brought slow handclaps, but no intervention from the umpires.

Shoaib's impact has already been greater than at Notts, where he increased shirt sales in the club shop but never got on the field. But it was Harmison, champing at the bit after an inactive international summer, who had Durham greybeards muttering that he had never bowled better for the county.

He outshone Shoaib with the new ball, claiming Stephen Peters to a keeper's catch and yorking Anurag Singh, and his control and aggression were generally excellent.

Two cheap tail-end wickets gave him four for 50, but with better luck his return might have been more startling. Gordon Muchall spared Kadeer Ali at slip, a difficult chance, and twice in Harmison's sixth over Kadeer deflected rearing deliveries high to a third- man boundary left criminally vacant.

Worcestershire's is the pace attack likelier to win promotion. Nantie Hayward had Jon Lewis lbw for nought, then pulled up in his delivery stride and departed with another leg injury. Matthew Mason is powerful and hits the seam; the left-armer Mark Harrity is running into form. But the over-rate was so dilatory that the fun went out of the day.