We need to get the basics right to stand a chance - View from the Lumley End
1:27pm Friday 5th September 2008
WHEN Durham look back on their season, it may well be this week they point to as to when it all went wrong.
Hampshire, who started the season looking as doomed as a violinist who boarded the Titanic complaining that alas, he could not swim, have come from almost nowhere in the second half of the season to wreak unholy iceberg-shaped vengeance for last season's FPT final trouncing.
Fans of sporting superstition should no doubt have expected to see such a metaphor heading straight for them, but the lack of lifeboats is no less galling to take.
The epic batting performance from Sean Ervine in the County Championship was a masterful display of batting on a club wicket which early on had promised to be every bit as controversial and unpredictable as that at the Riverside which had earlier in the month accounted for Kent and any chance of entertainment lasting longer than four days.
Having rattled through the season with a seam attack, which had at times more than compensated for middle order deficiencies, it was a shock that those final wickets could not be cleaned up.
This must have been especially galling for Mark Davies who seems to be in the form of his life in the LVCC, albeit with rather friendly wickets to help him.
The run-in to said tournament is less than easy and, weather permitting of course, you would imagine that three wins out of four will be required to snatch the title, with the trip to rivals Somerset and then the home tie with defending champions Sussex looking set, to separate the men from the boys in a manner not unlike the attendant at a soft-play area.
The baffling ECB decision to allow Steve Harmison, but not Paul Collingwood to play in the run-in seems contrary at best.
Colly has of course played international cricket all summer, but it's not as if Harmison has been locked away, twiddling his thumbs and re-watching DVDs of when he was an international star in order to get himself back into form.
The defeat in the Pro40 more or less stops Durham's chances of winning the competition, bar two wins in the final games and an inspired intervention from Geoff Cook doing an ethically suspect rain dance in a bid to thwart Hampshire and Nottinghamshire.
For all the rain interruption made the target left to chase seem somewhat improbable, the game was more or less gone after the abject bowling display.
Luck plays a part in any championship win, but getting the basics more consistently right goes a very long way too.