FORMER England Under-19 paceman Mark Turner will make his first-class debut for Durham in the championship match against Essex, starting at Riverside today.

An all-round sportsman, the 20-year-old Wearsider has also played football for Manchester United Youths and Sunderland Boys. Turner comes in along with Neil Killeen, replacing Paul Collingwood and Liam Plunkett, who has been ruled out by his heel injury but is expected to be fit for next week's match at Northampton.

Durham are also going to continue with last Saturday's experiment of opening with Nicky Peng, dropping Nathan Astle down to four.

Peng made only five at Worcester and has a top championship score of 39 in seven innings this season, but coach Martyn Moxon said: "He has always looked pretty comfortable at the crease.

"We talked about him going in first during the winter and put in a lot of work towards him being able to play the new ball.

"We hope he can make a success of it, but the main reason for the change is that we want to get the best out of Nathan.

"He's happy to go in first, but in the longer form of the game he is used to batting in the middle order. We are trying to learn from what happened with Marcus North last season."

Collingwood's absence changes the balance of the team and to accommodate a fourth seamer, Gareth Breese will move up to No 6 in the batting order, with Phil Mustard at seven, but Plunkett's absence also weakens the batting.

Killeen will be making his first championship appearance of the season and has been preferred to Australian Callum Thorp.

Essex, who are fourth in division two, are also depleted, with Darren Gough joining Collingwood on England one-day duty, while skipper Ronnie Irani is injured.

They have taken young Yorkshire seamer Nick Thornicroft on loan and he could make his second Riverside appearance as he played there for the Tykes last season.

Essex have a strong batting line-up, with the Flower brothers, Andy and Grant, from Zimbabwe following prolific openers Will Jefferson and Alistair Cook, while youngster Ravindra Bopara has been in good form.

Wicketkeeper James Foster takes over the reins from Irani and becomes the fourth former Durham University student currently captaining county sides, along with Mark Chilton (Lancashire), Ben Hutton (Middlesex) and Luke Sutton (Derbyshire).

With the possibility that they will need two spinners at Northampton next week, Durham have a slight worry about Graeme Bridge, who has a back problem.

He will continue to have treatment over the next few days.

Durham: D M Benkenstein (capt), J J B Lewis, N Peng, N J Astle, G J Muchall, G R Breese, P Mustard, A A Noffke, M L Turner, M Davies, N Killeen.

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