BIRTHS have a habit of inspiring new fathers to great deeds, but the imminent arrival of James Brinkley's first child did absolutely nothing for his Durham teammates yesterday.

With Brinkley absent, Durham were reduced to ten men and squandered all the hard work they had put in to recover from a poor start at Edgbaston.

On what must rank among their five most calamitous days in first-class cricket, they almost turned a commanding position into a three-day defeat.

With former teammate Melvyn Betts taking five for 22, Durham were all out for 102, leaving Warwickshire to score 227 to win and they finished on 176 for two.

The hosts raced along at more than five an over until the last half hour, when in fading light they added only 15 in the last eight overs.

On a pitch of increasingly variable bounce, it should have been a testing target for Warwickshire but they were given a flying start and Mark Wagh thrashed 76 not out.

Wagh, 24, a Birmingham-born former Oxford University captain, is clearly not a man to look a gift horse in the mouth.

He obviously has talent as he averaged 45.5 in nine first-class games last season and he rode some early luck yesterday to punish bowling which was mostly as ill-directed as the batting was ill-advised.

It can be argued that it was also ill-advised to go into a match with a player who was in danger of being called away, but Durham's hand was partly forced by their injuries.

Their troubles initially stemmed from their anxiety to get after Betts, who owed his first two wickets to rash strokes.

More than half of Durham's runs came in a seventh wicket stand of 56 between Ian Hunter and Danny Law after Betts had surprisingly been taken off.

Bowling the second over after lunch, he took two wickets in three balls to have Durham reeling on 43 for six, but with Hunter determined to meet fire with fire Betts was given only two more overs.

It looked a flawed decision by home skipper Michael Powell as the seventh wicket pair survived for 21 overs in difficult conditions.

The sticky heat encouraged swing and the pitch was also showing signs of uneven bounce, but Durham's young new ball pair were unable to take advantage.

Simon Brown and Neil Killeen would have relished the conditions, and so might Brinkley had he not been summoned to the Worcester maternity hospital.

In what should have been six overs of testing batting before tea Warwickshire reached 30 without loss, with Hunter conceding 19 runs in his three overs.

Steve Harmison was a little more accurate but soon after the break Powell clipped him for three leg-side fours in four balls.

Hunter returned for another go at Harmison's end and with 15 coming off his first over Warwickshire suddenly had the scent of a three-day win.

Jon Lewis took a huge gamble by giving Hunter another over and Wagh hit him for three successive fours - two leg glances and an on-drive - before surviving a straightforward slip chance off the next ball.

It was put down by, of all people, Paul Collingwood, whose magnificent 153 should have been a match-winning innings.

He was also trying to get Durham back into the game with his bowling, as he swung one in to left-hander Nick Knight to have him lbw for 20, then held a low return catch to see off Powell for 22.

But the dropped catch was the last straw for poor Hunter, who was Durham's second top scorer in the match with innings of 31 and 37 and had his best first-class figures of four for 55 in Warwickshire's first innings.

Wagh was on 34 when he was put down, but this was clearly his day and he continued to blaze away, reaching 50 off 59 balls with nine fours.

He and David Hemp then seemed to decide they didn't want Saturday off after all as they adopted a more cautious approach in the last half hour.

Had they been a little closer to victory, Warwickshire could have claimed an extra half hour.

How different it might have been had Wagh's first scoring stroke, an inside edge off Collingwood, not so narrowly missed off stump on its way to the boundary.

Most of his other boundaries were turned sweetly through the leg side, although he also drove a superb straight six off Nicky Phillps, whose first four overs went for 28 runs.

For Warwickshire to get so close to victory should not have been remotely possible given their position at the start of a day which began with Michael Gough pulling Vasbert Drakes in front of mid-wicket for four.

When they reached nine Durham were 133 ahead with ten wickets standing, or nine as it turned out.

Gough then drove Betts straight to mid-off and Martin Speight edged a nasty lifter from Drakes to give Knight the first of three smartly-taken slip catches.

Collingwood went for the shot of a man in form, slicing a drive off Betts straight to backward point, and when Lewis also tried to drive Betts and edged to the wicketkeeper four wickets had gone down for seven runs.

While Law studiously dug in, taking 27 balls to get off the mark, Nicky Peng played some lovely shots to rekindle memories of the 98 he scored against Surrey almost 13 months ago.

But on 22 he fell to Betts' second ball after lunch, pushing forward and edging low to Knight's right at second slip.

Two balls later Andrew Pratt got a nick on to his pad and the ball rebounded to give Betts a simple return catch.

Hunter scored 14 runs off the first 16 balls he faced before settling down to keep Law solid company.

Law hit his first boundary off the 80th ball he faced, a straight drive off Dougie Brown, but the next ball was shorter and he edged it low to Knight.

Another shortish ball from Brown had Hunter lbw and Harmison drove the second ball he faced straight to mid-off, the last three wickets going down for three runs.

With Warwickshire needing 51, an early wicket this morning might just rekindle Durham's hopes. But if they bowl as poorly as yesterday it will be all over inside an hour.