KEEGAN PETERSEN will make his Durham debut in the County Championship game with Leicestershire that begins at Riverside this morning.

The South Africa international flew into the North-East yesterday morning, fresh from his national side’s series win over Bangladesh, and took part in his first training session with his new county team-mates yesterday afternoon.

He goes straight into the Durham squad for today’s first home game of the season, with James Franklin’s side hoping to build on last week’s opening-week draw at Glamorgan.

Petersen is the only addition to Franklin’s 13-man squad, with Graham Clark dropping out after he was selected to play for the seconds at the Ageas Bowl.

“Keegan joins us and we are all excited for his arrival,” said Durham skipper Scott Borthwick. “He comes to the Riverside on the back of a series win against Bangladesh and is in good form, so hopefully he is all good to go for the Leicestershire game.

“It is always nice when you get a Test superstar join up with the squad, so hopefully he can get started tomorrow and get some runs under his belt.”

Durham might well have beaten Glamorgan had the weather not resulted in so much time being lost in the opening two days.

Alex Lees’ unbeaten century proved his wellbeing in the wake of his Test debut in the West Indies over the winter, while Chris Rushworth also picked up his first four wickets of the season.

“We were in command of the Glamorgan game and played the better cricket out of the two sides,” said Borthwick. “If things went our way, we could have probably won the game, but the weather stopped that with us losing so many overs.

“I think we probably started a bit slow on day one, we probably could have hit our straps a bit better on the first morning, but I thought on day two we were excellent with the ball. Then, the way we batted, I thought was brilliant led by Alex Lees’ 182 not out. Overall, it was a good opening match and we were happy to take 15 points away from Glamorgan.”

Leicestershire also drew their opening game against Worcestershire, and this week’s match will be the first between the two sides in red-ball cricket since a rain-affected draw in 2020. Lees scored 181 in a high-scoring draw when Leicestershire last visited Chester-le-Street in 2019.

“Leicestershire got a great draw last week,” said Borthwick. “It was great the way they hung on and batted for that period of time for the last wicket, so that shows they have a lot of fight in their side. We know we have to be at the top of our game this week, but we know if we bat and bowl well, we will have a good chance.”