DURHAM now have a full set in the championship after claiming the scalps of Leicestershire and Lancashire this season. Prior to that the last to fall were Yorkshire in 2003, when they were beaten twice, and last September's win at Scarborough made it three wins in the last four meetings for Durham as they prepare for the clash at Riverside, starting on Friday.

Apart from this season's two new victims, the teams who have lost only once to Durham are all in division one - Kent, Surrey and Sussex. Although they haven't met in recent seasons, Kent are the one team Durham have never beaten in a one-day match, and they have the chance to put that right at Tunbridge Wells in two weeks.

They have beaten Lancashire four times in one-day combat, including their first game as a first-class county at the Racecourse in 1992, and Friday's win means they have always beaten the Red Rose men when Muthiah Muralitharan has been in the team.

They faced him twice in 2001. In a Benson & Hedges tie at Liverpool he had figures of 10-2-19-1 as Durham totalled 193 for seven (Jimmy Daley 70) then Neil Killeen dismissed the top four as Lancashire were bowled out for 139. In a one-day league match at Riverside a few weeks later Murali (9-2-24-2) was out-bowled by Nicky Phillips (9-2-21-4) as Durham won by 24 runs.

This year's return championship match at Riverside starts on July 8, just before Murali disappears to play in Sri Lanka's series against the West Indies.

WHAT a difference a year makes. Last May the injury situation was so bad Durham had to field bowling coach Alan Walker in a C & G match then draft in Tahir Mughal from the North Staffordshire League.

At Old Trafford last week they decided to rest Mark Davies, even though he is top of the national first-class bowling averages.

Of those with ten wickets or more, Davies leads the way with 15 at 13.8 and Steve Harmison is second with 27 at 14.5. Liam Plunkett is also well up there with 17 at 23.17.

News of the one that got away, Melvyn Betts, is that he made his first appearance of the season for Middlesex against Gloucestershire last week and conceded runs at more than five an over in both innings. But he also picked up eight wickets, only five fewer than he managed in six championship games last season.

WHEN we were visited in the Old Trafford Press box on Thursday by chairman of selectors David Graveney we recalled how, in his second season as Durham captain in 1993, they made 515 on the ground and lost by six wickets.

"I caught and bowled Atherton in their second innings and he's been going on about it ever since," said Graveney.

Atherton, in fact, was out for 30 as Lancashire made 157 for four to win with Graveney taking three for 66. Durham had been spun out for 83 in their second innings, but their own second spinner in the match was Mark Briers, who failed to take a wicket.

Graveney had to spend much of his stay on Thursday being assailed by the cricket correspondents from the national tabloids, most of whom hadn't seen Durham play for years. Nor were they particularly interested this time in a historic result unfolding in front of them (they didn't turn up on the last day) as they were there to see Freddie Flintoff.

The fact that he bowled a few overs was enough confirmation for the tabloids that the golden boy will be fully fit for Test duty. Unlike the national hacks, Graveney appeared very interested in the emergence of another potential golden boy, Liam Plunkett.

AS Steve Harmison handled his post-match press conference at Old Trafford on Friday with what is now his customary good grace and eloquence it was interesting to hear that he was well aware he had just recorded his best figures for Durham.

His previous best were six for 111 against Sussex at Riverside in 2001, an occasion when he declined to speak to us afterwards on the grounds that we all wrote rubbish.

He had polished off the innings on the second morning for the first six-wicket haul of his career, so it must have been the reporting of his one for 80 in 22 overs on the first day which rattled him.

While he still gets homesick for Ashington, Harmison has come an amazingly long way both as a bowler and as a person since returning after a week from an England Under 19 tour of Pakistan at a time when he had never travelled alone as far as Newcastle.

THE Lancashire press really had the knives out for the umpire who gave Flintoff out lbw to Harmison last Friday. Admittedly Freddie was well forward and it didn't look a good decision, but Steve Garratt would not have been so widely pilloried had he been an established umpire.

A former Nottingham policeman, he is in his third year on the reserve list and was standing in only his second championship game as the reserves are given more opportunities with four umpires due to retire this year.

Garratt would have been the most unpopular man in Manchester were it not for Malcolm Glazer.