Cricket: Collingwood Takes a Champagne Break

The rain which wiped out Thursday's play in Chester-le-Street left the groundsheets looking like paddling pools yesterday morning and the first session was taken up with swabbing and sluicing. Every moment lost took Durham closer to the draw confirming them as a First Division club next season but their captain Paul Collingwood was still not ready to add yet another bottle of champagne to the cases that followed the Ashes triumph.

"It will be the best summer for me when we get promoted but I still don't want to take that as a formality," he said. "Our standards have gone up so much, right from Mike Hussey's innings of 253 at Leicester in our first game, and it's been an excellent year. Now we just want to finish it off. There's been a buzz about the boys that started pre-season in Dubai. Then we won our first four championship games and it's built from there."

Collingwood seems to have found the readjustment to county cricket a little tricky but this must be mainly down to exhaustion and champagne poisoning. He bowled wearily on Wednesday and yesterday stroked 22 before trying to force Damien Wright and snicking to the opposition captain David Sales at second slip.

The weather, alas, has limited positive cricket in Durham's final championship outing. In theory Northants could still pip them to promotion, having declared at Wednesday evening's 414 for seven, if they can whip out Durham twice, take maximum points, and do the same to Yorkshire next week. But Sales's hands-in-pocket stance at slip in the afternoon suggested that this possibility existed only in mathematics, not in reality.

Collingwood's caution was vindicated in the evening, though, as Durham made a mess of saving the follow-on. Gareth Breese and Liam Plunkett were there at stumps but Durham closed queasily on 171 for six. Should they be bowled out twice today their fate will lie next week in the hands of their soft southern neighbours Yorkshire in Northampton.