By Jon Steer
May 23 2003

After Lewis, Love, Pratt and Wells all passed 50 to get Durham to 317 and the first batting points of the season, the bowlers are also doing well, with only Di Venuto causing problems. Durham were given a boost with the return of Martin Love from international duties and the recovery of Dewald Pretorius for injury to give them both their of overseas players for the first time this season.

A solid batting performance from Jon Lewis (52), Love (54), Gary Pratt (62) and Vince Wells (61) meant that even though no-one made a big score, we get some bonus batting points for the first time this season. Gough (12) and Muchall (0) will be disappointed not to have got in the runs and Gough will need to put together a better innings soon as his place must be coming under threat.

With only three full time bowlers in the team again (Pretorius, Killeen and Phillips), they were always going to be under pressure. But with the rather large exception of Australian Di Venuto, our bowlers have been on top.

Neil Killeen made the first breakthrough with the score on 11, then Pretorius and Phillips combined to take the next seven wickets with Derbyshire moving from 81-1 to 182-8 and only Di Venuto passing 20.

As in previous matches we seem to lack the killer touch when it comes to wrapping up the tail and a 54 run 9th wicket partnership between Di Venuto and KJ Dean frustrated the bowlers as Derbyshire moved on to 236 before the ninth wicket fell when Dean was run out.

Soon afterwards, Di Venuto was finally out having reached 150 when he was trapped lbw by Danny Law with the score on 244.

Durham played out ten overs, scoring 16 runs, Gough finishing the day on 15 not out and Jon Lewis yet to score. With the forecast of wet weather for the next couple of days the most likely result is still a draw but we can hope that if we can put a decent score up as quickly as possible we have a chance of the first victory of the season.