Durham in a spin at just the wrong time
Durham are in a spin as their problems against the turning ball have sent them into a downward spiral.
Nor can they fight like with like, because the struggle to produce spinners at Riverside has become even more acute.
Durham have been spun to defeat on dry pitches away from home in their last two games and ran into more difficulty this week against Warwickshire’s Jeetan Patel.
He is one of the very few spinners in recent years to have taken a five-wicket haul at the Emirates Riverside, following his 5-49 in 2014 with 5-32 in Durham’s first innings.
The last thing Durham wanted was to encounter firstday turn on their home ground after losing 17 wickets to spin at Taunton and nine to Ollie Rayner at Lord’s.
But while those pitches were prepared with Durham’s weakness in mind, their own policy has always been to leave the groundsman free to produce the best pitch possible.
They have been very happy with the results of Vic Demain’s work this season and the fact that the ball turned on day one resulted from Patel’s exceptional skill.
Scott Borthwick worked with the off-spinner in New Zealandduringthewinter.But, while the leg-spinner’s one-day bowling has improved, there was no hint of him repeating Patel’s success as Warwickshire built a big lead.
No home-produced spinner comes close to Borthwick’s 164 first-class wickets for the county, and of those who had the opportunity to kick on this season, Ryan Pringle has been dropped and Gurman Randhawa has been released.
The Huddersfield-born left-armer arrived on trial midway through last season and was handed a development contract. But now he has gone the way of other recent young spinners like Ryan Buckley and Max Morley.
When Pringle broke into the team for the last nine matches last season, he took 20 wickets and had a top score of 99. In seven games this year, he took six wickets and had a top score of 37, while, in the NatWest T20 Blast, he didn’t bowl in the quarter-final and sent down only two overs on finals day.
For the first three Championship games after his omission, he was replaced by 19-year-old off-spinning allrounder Adam Hickey, who picked up six wickets but was left out against Warwickshire.
Next week’s visitors are Notts, who can be expected to make maximum use of Samit Patel and Imran Tahir, who took 5-85 for Hampshire at the Riverside in 2009.
Only eight overs were bowled on the third day of the Championship match against Warwickshire yesterday.
The visitors added 29 runs without loss to reach 344-7, stretching the lead to 137 runs.