How long will it last? - View from the Lumley End
3:46pm Friday 4th July 2008
IN ADDITION to watching Durham and pontificating about it to anyone who dares read this column, I spend my winter enjoying the delights of Sunderland AFC.
While avoiding clichés of the agony of supporting the world's foremost exporter of inconsistency, it is with ritualistic trepidation that I consider the possibility of Durham reaching the conclusion of two cups in the space of four days.
The North-East, nay, English sports fan is not conditioned to such things and perhaps by instinct expects it to come crashing down around their ears quicker than the unfortunate instance when Mrs Cow decided that her husband should be brought along shopping for crockery.
That nursery school metaphor aside, the expectation has to be that Durham are more than capable of reaching both finals and the bookies tend to agree.
The contrary spirit in all of us jumps onto the idea that the elusive 'curse of the favourites' shall be our undoing, but there's a very good reason you see a bookmakers on the corner of many of our streets, as ubiquitous as the local corner shop: bookmakers are regularly right.
And as Mr Ladbroke is chauffeur driven home tonight, lighting a fat cigar with a £50 note (other bookmakers are available folks), what he sees is a team capable of competing for all four trophies this year.
While other clubs have relied heavily on Kolpak talent, it's Durham's predominantly homegrown seam attack on which the success has been built and everyone in domestic cricket will heartily pat Durham on the back for dragging themselves up by their bootstraps, providing the backbone to England sides, being all round nice chaps etc. ad infinitum.
Now here comes the unpopular bit: Steve Harmison is looking a world class bowler again.
Championing Harmison seems to be in some quarters as popular as appeasing Hitler; that he's been consigned to the scrap heap, a relic of a bygone age, like the solo careers of the Spice Girls or the bafflingly named cereal Golden Grahams.
But by filling the void left by Ottis Gibson as a mature leader of a relatively young bowling attack, the man dismissed as somehow bottling it has shown the desire and ability to play for England again.
He provides the one thing England lack, the genuine pace and bounce to terrify batsmen and it's this variation that means that he should be pushing for a recall at the expense of Jimmy Anderson, a bowler so inconsistent you half expect him to forget his kit some days and be forced to play in his underwear.
While the bowling attack are probably the best on the country circuit, the batting has been excellent without being over-reliant on the bigger names, something which will only improve with the return of Shiv Chanderpaul later in the month.
As wonderful as it's been to see Pollock on his farewell tour, the contribution made by Albie Morkel cannot be underestimated.
His gargantuan hitting and his permanent bafflement at just how little light and how poor weather cricket can be played in, while being gently ribbed by the fans in the Lumley End as he shivered away, has been a genuine pleasure to watch and it's a shame that any potential Twenty20 finals day will sadly be without him.
Momentum is a vital thing in every kind of sport and if the coming weekend brings two wins, something of a juggernaut appears to be rolling into the second half of the season.
It surely can't last though, can it?