TWO of the greatest batsmen the world has seen will be on show at the Riverside today when Durham take on the Lashings World X1.

Brian Lara has flown over from Trinidad for the match and among the six other West Indians in the squad is 50-year-old Sir Viv Richards, who played in 121 Tests up to 1991, 50 of them as captain.

Lara has been to Chester-le-Street before, scoring 91 for the West Indies team which played Durham in 1995, when two of his teammates today, Sherwin Campbell and Richie Richardson, made centuries.

Sir Viv has visited Durham twice with Glamorgan, playing at the university ground in 1992 and at Hartlepool the following year.

Also in the Lashings team is Shoaib Akhtar, who was hailed as the world's fastest bowler just before he visited the Riverside in 1999 with Pakistan. They were playing Durham in a World Cup warm-up game but had reached 50 without loss when the match was washed out, so Akhtar didn't take the field.

He has since been plagued by injury and was last week ruled out of the forthcoming one-day tournament in Morocco featuring Pakistan, Sri Lanka and South Africa.

Lara has also been injured, breaking an arm in a collision with Muthiah Muralitharan last December and has only recently started playing again.

There are two Lashings - a Tex Mex restaurant in Maidstone and a beach bar and hotel in Antigua - both set up by entrepeneur David Folb, a wicketkeeper who also created the cricket team.

They still have a team playing village cricket in Kent, but the involvement of star names has steadily increased to produce the World XI.

Durham have also arranged to play Scotland at the Chester-le-Street club ground tomorrow, starting at 10.45am, and coach Martyn Moxon says they are treating both games as serious practice for their attempt to survive in division one of the National League.

In that case he may not be totally at ease with the decision to help market today's game by holding a Pro For The Day competition.

The winner, 42-year-old Alastair Gibson from Morpeth, trained with the Durham squad yesterday, and it is to be hoped that the anticipated crowd of 5,000 take his participation in good spirit as he can be expected to do little more than make a fool of himself.

Tickets will be available at gate two from 11am, priced £12 for adults and £5 for under 18s, and the match starts at 1pm.

Lashings: Brian Lara, Stuart Williams, Viv Richards, Sherwin Campbell, Richie Richardson, Jimmy Adams, Junior Murray (West Indies), Grant Flower, Stuart Carlisle (Zimbabwe), Chris Harris (New Zealand), Shoaib Akhtar, Mohammad Akram (Pakistan).

* Durham Academy all-rounder Liam Plunkett has been called into the England Under 19 squad for the second Test against India starting at Southampton today.