Durham Diary

Two of Collingwood's hundreds have come off student attacks, while his highest of 190 was against a Sri Lanka side which included Chaminda Vaas at Riverside in 2002. During his half-season stint with Worcestershire, the left-armer has also been on the receiving end of Collingwood's two hundreds this season.

Out of his seven championship hundreds, Collingwood's last three have all been against Worcestershire, with the long gap since the one at Riverside at the end of the 2001 season being explained by injuries and England one-day commitments.

They have also prevented him from playing in any Twenty20 matches to date, but he will make his debut for a Professional Cricketers' Association X1 against Australia this week prior to the Twenty20 international at the Rose Bowl, Southampton, next Monday.

DURHAM'S match at The Oval last Monday was the last to be played at the famous ground before the new £22m stand opens at the Vauxhall End. The refurbishment also includes a permanent video replay screen on the gasometer side.

The screen is inserted into the frame of the electronic scoreboard, creating a dual-purpose facility unique in this country. All very impressive, except that in a trial run during Durham's visit the messages being flashed up on the screen included the dreadful Americanism "Make some noize" (their spelling).

The scoreboard also confused us by putting up the player's number, instead of his score, under last man. It's bad enough for some traditionalists that players even wear numbers these days and there was an instance at The Oval where Durham's 77 (Neil Killeen) was bowling to Surrey's 77 (Mark Ramprakash).

In Killeen's case it's nothing to do with a sunset strip - he apparently wanted number seven but Gary Pratt already had it, so he opted for two sevens instead.

There was further confusion at Worcester when Nathan Astle went out to bat wearing a shirt with Breese on the back, apparently because he prefers a long-sleeved shirt for batting and hasn't yet got one with his own name.

UMPIRE Roy Palmer's performance at The Oval was the culmination of an unhappy day for Durham, which began with physio Nigel Kent snapping an Achilles tendon while supervising some pre-match stretches. He is now in plaster and is unlikely to be able to work for some time.

Durham were not aware of upsetting Palmer before he gave five of them out, four of the decisions being questionable. The only incident they can recall in the Surrey innings came when he gave a wide when the ball had brushed the batsman's pad and Phil Mustard appealed for a catch.

He apparently made some comment about being too experienced to fall for that, suggesting that Mustard had made the appeal in the hope of preventing a wide being signalled.

FOLLOWING Durham's visit to the delightful ground at Tunbridge Wells, which followed a four-day match against Surrey, Kent moved on to Maidstone to complete their annual visits to the two outgrounds they still use.

Few other counties venture away from HQ more than once a season - in Durham's case it has been once in two years - and when Warwickshire went to Stratford recently it was all over in two days. The same happened at Maidstone, yet the four-day match at Tunbridge Wells had petered out into a draw because the pitch was so flat.

Kent have been docked eight points for an unsatisfactory surface at Maidstone, which is a further blow to outground cricket. We can be sure Surrey won't be repeating this week's visit to Whitgift School after spending £22m at The Oval.

IN the absence of Brian Hunt on Test match duty, second team scorer Richie Hilton made his first team debut at Worcester. While he could hardly have had a finer setting for the experience, Saturday's drift towards a draw had him dreaming of Leadgate, where he would otherwise have been appearing as an opening batsman for Sacriston seconds.

As Worcestershire had a video analyst sitting in with the scorers, Richie was able to tell me that Ben Smith was clearly lbw to Ashley Noffke early in his innings of 123, while 84 of the 106 runs Smith scored on Friday came on the off-side.

Perhaps Durham hadn't been told this as his first two scoring shots on Saturday were a back-foot punch to the cover boundary and a drive for four through extra cover in Mark Davies' opening over.

There were two other incidents of note in the scorers' box. The first came when Gordon Muchall scored seven from a cover-driven three followed by four overthrows and the home scorer's computer initially refused to accept it. Then on Saturday the public address man left the tannoy switched on after his tea-time announcements.

With the conversation between the scorers and the video man audible all round the ground it was only a matter of time before someone came out with an expletive. It was of the sh... variety and was followed by the PA man asking: "Is that a technical term?"