DURHAM will promote Cameron Steel to open in the absence of Keaton Jennings for the Specsavers County Championship match at home to Glamorgan, starting today.

Jennings is returning to Canterbury to captain England Lions against South Africa on Wednesday and needs to end a run of poor form if he is to press his claims for next month's Test series.

Since starting the season with a hundred against Nottinghamshire, followed by two centuries in the first five Royal London Cup games, he has not passed 50 in 11 knocks.

The glorious run he enjoyed last season, culminating in a debut Test century, has ended with an average of 18.25 in his last eight championship innings, while Steel has begun to flourish.

The 21-year-old right-hander scored his maiden first-class century in the last home match against Northamptonshire and is averaging 40.66, second only to skipper Paul Collingwood, who is setting a hot pace with 636 runs at 63.6.

After a week off since failing to take the final wicket at Canterbury last Monday, Durham have a number of players back in contention after injury.

But the lack of second team cricket has not allowed Jack Burnham, Graham Onions, James Weighell and Usman Arshad to get back into serious action.

The seconds now have four days of cricket against Essex at Richmond, starting today with a one-day game.

Michael Richardson will return after being left out at Canterbury to accommodate an extra bowler and Paul Coughlin is also expected to be included after being rested following his ten-wicket haul against Northants.

Although their last three games have been decided in the last over, Durham have picked up only 39 points from four defeats and two draws and are on minus nine, 43 behind second bottom Leicestershire.

Stephen Cook has this game and next week's day-night home match against Worcestershire, for which Ben Stokes and Mark Wood are available, to improve his average of 20.41.

Glamorgan's official overseas player is left-handed big-hitter Colin Ingram, who has played in 31 one-day internationals, although they also include two other South Africans in Jacques Rudolph and paceman Marchant de Lange, whose wife has a British passport.

Starting with the three-wicket victory against Durham at Swansea, they have won both games since Rudolph handed over the captaincy to Australian seamer Michael Hogan, who also has a British passport and has taken 249 first-class wickets since joining Glamorgan in 2013.

Two other Australia-born players in the squad are opening batsman Nick Selman, who struck Coughlin for six, six, two to win the Swansea game with three balls left, and paceman Timm van der Gugten. But the latter is away playing for the Netherlands against Zimbabwe.

The teams have not met in four-day action at Riverside since 2004, when a Glamorgan team led by current coach Robert Croft won by 201 runs.

It was the match for which injury-hit Durham drafted in a seamer named Pallav Kumar for one of his two appearances.