Durham to ignore foreign legions (From Durham Times)

Durham to ignore foreign legions

10:38am Monday 13th September 2010 in Sport By Scott Wilson

DURHAM chairman Clive Leach has revealed the club will not be signing an overseas player for next season unless an outstanding candidate becomes available at an exceedingly low price.

But with Neil Killeen and Will Gidman having removed themselves from the squad list, Leach will meet with chief executive David Harker to discuss the possibility of signing former England internationals Ryan Sidebottom and James Kirtley.

While South African Albie Morkel and New Zealander Ross Taylor featured in their Twenty20 matches, Durham went through the rest of this season without an overseas performer.

The policy was partially dictated by finance, but it had the added benefit of enabling youngsters like Ben Stokes, Ben Harmison and Scott Borthwick to enjoy an extended run in the first-team.

Their progress helped make up for a disappointing campaign that will end with Durham having ceded the County Championship trophy they claimed for the previous two years, and while Leach admits improvements are required, he does not expect to be looking overseas for reinforcements.

“I can tell you that, as things are, we won’t be taking an overseas player unless something crops up,” said the Durham chief.

“Unless some Test fast bowler crops up wanting to come here for £10,000 (a year), we won’t be changing our policy.

It’s what we’ve done this year, except in Twenty20, and it’s allowed us to bring the young players on.

“It would be ludicrous for me to say after two years of winning the County Championship that I’ve been happy with this season. It’s not been the year we would have liked, but it’s been an interesting transitional year and we’ve used the opportunity to bring in some players who have come up to the plate and done damn well.

“All in all, we’re disappointed we didn’t get the runs or wickets we wanted, but we’ve brought some young players through and hopefully next year we’ll be stronger and fitter, more focused and more experienced.”

Nevertheless, there will be some movement this summer, with Durham already eyeing a number of potential reinforcements to their bowling attack.

Killeen announced his retirement earlier this month, while Gidman has opted to move to Gloucestershire, so with question marks over Graham Onions’ fitness after he missed the whole of this season with injury, Durham’s seam ranks currently look sparse.

Sidebottom will leave Nottinghamshire this summer after failing to agree a new contract, and while Sussex have made a formal approach for his services, the former Yorkshire bowler is willing to listen to alternative offers.

Kirtley will leave Sussex at the end of the current campaign, while Durham have also expressed an interest in 32-year-old Charlie Shreck, who is also interesting Somerset.

“I can name you three fast bowlers who are on the market – Sidebottom, Kirtley and Shreck,” confirmed Leach.

“We’ve already had a couple of chats about the situation, and David Harker and myself will think about how we do it.

“Geoff (Cook) makes the recommendations about cricket, but inevitably commercial decisions also come into it. As I’ve always said, cricket is our number one job but we have to do it within our means.”

Leach was happy to see Durham Emirates ICG almost at full capacity for Friday’s One-Day International between England and Pakistan, but the chairman admits to frustrations at the lack of Test cricket being staged in the North-East.

England’s last five-day fixture at Chester-le-Street was the sparsely-attended Test with the West Indies last May, and while the ground has been guaranteed an Ashes Test in 2013, the lengthy barren spell is an infuriation, given the amount of money that has been spent on improvements.

“In the last six years, I think we should have got a bit more of the big international matches, and by that I mean the Tests,” said Leach.

“We’ve had two Test matches in six years, both against the West Indies, who can hardly be said to be the top team at the moment, and one of them was very early in the year. We’ve spent millions on the ground and the only basis for that was to make sure we got some of the money back in international matches.”