IF Durham's Paul Collingwood hopes to be in the team for the first Test against New Zealand next week, Nasser Hussain is clearly determined it will not be at his expense.

There has been talk of the former England captain making way, but he wants to play in five more Tests to reach his 100 and set out his stall to get as much practice as possible at Riverside yesterday.

Whether he would have asked to open for Essex had Shoaib Akhtar been playing, we'll never know. But he obviously fancied his chances against the depleted Durham attack and mixed graft with occasional belligerence against Gareth Breese to make 70.

Hussain finally fell to the impressive Mark Davies, who finished the day with the superb figures of three for 19 from 15 overs, ten of which were maidens.

Davies had one for five after his first seven overs then conceded ten runs off the eighth. He returned after tea with an even better spell of two for four in seven overs.

Unfortunately, it all seemed like batting practice for Hussain as the general lack of urgency suggested any hope of extracting a result from the rain-ruined encounter had been abandoned.

Following the loss of 18 overs on the first day, only 27 balls were possible on Saturday and play began 90 minutes late yesterday.

But it was good to see a signal from the Essex dressing room for the batsmen to stay out when they were offered the chance to retire because of bad light with nine overs remaining.

Graham Napier drove at the next ball and edged it to Andrew Pratt to give Pakistani Tahir Mughal his second wicket, but then John Stephenson emerged to drive Breese for three sixes and a four in the next over.

It provided some late sparkle on a day when much of the cricket matched the greyness of the weather, and having started on six without loss in reply to Durham's 339, Essex closed the day on 241 for seven.

Hussain got off the mark rather streakily. He appeared to be trying to whip Tahir over square leg, but got a leading edge which just cleared mid-on.

Otherwise Tahir posed little threat in his opening five-over spell, bowling at little more than medium pace. He warmed to his task a little more when he returned, swinging one in to have Will Jefferson lbw, but Durham's attack was heavily reliant on Davies and Neil Killeen.

Two perfectly-pitched balls from Davies moved away to find the edges of left-handers Alastair Cook and Andy Flower, while Hussain appeared to be unsettled by being rapped on the hand when Davies was at his liveliest and got out to the next ball.

Killeen got past the bat a few times and almost forced Hussain to play on off the last ball before tea with his score on 68.

But Durham's lack of resources was all too evident when they brought on Ian Pattison for the first over after lunch. The fact that his five overs cost only ten runs was because he delivered the ball so wide of off stump even the 6ft 11in Jefferson struggled to reach it.

Hussain was content to leave anything he didn't need to play at and had hit only two fours before opening up against Breese's off spin in the 36th over. He went down the pitch to stroke the first ball through extra cover, lofted the second for a four and blasted the third high over long-on.

Tahir then beat him on 49, but he reached 50 off 137 balls and had another dart at Breese with four, six, four off successive balls. These were rare flurries and other than his boundaries off the spinner he had still hit only two when Davies persuaded him to play away from his body, giving Pratt a straightforward catch.

Four overs later Davies removed former Zimbabwe captain Flower, now leading Essex as a British passport holder. He looked out of touch and scored most of his 15 runs off 63 balls off the edge.

In the next over Aftab Habib drove lavishly at Pattison and edged to Marcus North at first slip, where the catch was held as comfortably as everything else which has come the Australian's way.

As in the C & G match against Sussex, Pattison improved after his poor start, but when Napier pulled him for six it relieved some of the pressure after Essex's mini collapse.

Napier and James Foster put on 39, and after Stephenson's blast Jon Lewis was brave enough to leave Breese on and was rewarded when Foster's attempted sweep resulted in a lobbed catch to North at backward short leg.

The loss of these two wickets prompted Essex to accept the next offer of bad light.