POSTING big scores at Emirates Riverside was often a struggle last season for Durham.

The County Championship season was pegged back from the off as the top order failed to make much headway on home wickets.

Batting points were at a premium throughout the summer. The club has plans to appoint a specialist batting coach to joint the new coaching set-up.

James Franklin officially took over as head coach this week and, while he may have come to the North-East on the back of a stint as assistant coach in the Big Bash with Brisbane Heat, the intricacies of the four-day game are in his make-up.

“Top order batting was a general struggle here in England last summer, not just Durham,’’ reflected the ex-New Zealand all-rounder.

“We will talk individually and as a group and try and improve those areas, one of them might be opening in four-day cricket.

“How do you get through the first 20 minutes and extend the innings to make hay later on? That comes in time, working on each player and what they want and need form the game and what the team needs.

“Cricket has changed and it’s very rare you will see an opening batsman scratch his mark at the first ball of the day and then scratch hi mark at the end of the day. We can implement a mentality to want to do that, but the pace of the game now has changed with T20.

“The sub-conscious of batsman has changed and filtered from T20 to one-day to four-day to Test cricket. Look at the scoring rates, Test cricket rates will be up from half or one an over from ten years ago.’’

“You bat quicker, scoring 350 in a day as opposed to 260.’’

The coaching changes at the club are being overseen by the new director of cricket Marcus North.

As a former Australian Test batsman, with 21 appearances for the Baggy Green, he understands the importance of a stout opening to the innings.

The process of recruiting a separate coach for the T20 side remains open, while they are equally relaxed about the desire to have a permanent specialist high-performance batting coach in the ranks.

“With the T20 we’re looking to bring more of a specialist coach in but we’ve got a bit of time and our focus is finishing off our pre-season work here before going off on a tour, and then the first two Champo games, then the 50-over,’’ said North.

“As regards to the batting consultant, it’s about getting the right person if the right person’s there. It’s not about appointing someone for the sake of it.

“If there’s no one there, they’re not there. We’ve got some brilliant coaches within in John Windows, James Lowe, Steve Chapman has done some work with the batters and some spin, so it’s not like we haven’t had the resources. The guys have been getting some great tuition and their improvement throughout the winter has been fantastic.

“I’ve done quite a bit of one-on-one work so they’ve had every support they can. It’s more just the perception. If you came to the day in, day out training, you’d see these guys are getting the support which is making them better players. That’s the most important thing. That goes with the whole review and restructure of our high-performance coaching model to challenge and support them in the best way.’’

There’s a feeling that North and new chief executive Tim Bostock are modernising the club’s outlook under their regime and North admitted: “The game’s evolving and there’s so much more specialist coaching now and the traditional style is changing so you adapt and move and go with that.

“Whether that’s influenced me or not, I don’t know but I’ve been part of that as a player so I’ve kind of taking what I’ve seen has worked well and if that means you think we’ve modernised, they’re your words, but I feel it’s more about getting the right structure from a coaching point of view to make us as successful as possible.’’