KYLE COETZER will not be allowed to play for his new county Northamptonshire in Sunday’s CB 40 League match at home to Durham.

Northants have signed the 27-year-old Scotland batsman on loan for the rest of the season, but a condition of the agreement is that he does not play against Durham.

He went straight into the team for the current LV County Championship match against Derbyshire at Chesterfield, in which he has scored 27 and 18 with batsmen generally struggling for runs.

Coetzer’s details were circulated to counties recently and if he is contracted by Northants for next season he should find himself back in the top flight as they are top of division two.

They won their CB 40 match at Durham in early season, but are now out of the running for the semi-finals and Durham need to beat them on Sunday.

Coetzer was the regular No 3 in the Durham team which won the Friends Provident Trophy in 2007, scoring 61 in the final at Lord’s.

He also made his maiden championship hundred at home to Warwickshire that year, but survived for only the first three matches in 2008.

He seemed to have cemented a place as an opener when he scored 107 at home to Nottinghamshire at the end of the 2009 season then hit 172 in the MCC v Champions curtain- raiser in Abu Dhabi in 2010. But he was dropped after six games and hasn’t made a championship appearance since.

He has spent the last two months with Scotland and scored a century in the CB 40 League against Northants at the Grange, Edinburgh.

Coach Geoff Cook will speak to Steve Harmison to find out if he feels fit enough to play for the second team in a four-day match against Hampshire, starting on Monday at South Northumberland.

A scan showed no serious damage to Harmison’s ankle and Cook said: “He’s had two unfortunate injuries this season and just needs to get some consistent cricket, then he can start to enjoy it again.

“He still has the X factor and at 33 he should still have a stack of cricket ahead of him.”