Neil Killeen has named a 13 player squad for Sunday’s Royal London Cup fixture against Middlesex at Seat Unique Riverside.
Durham will be looking to put Thursday’s defeat against Surrey behind them as they entertain the Seaxes who also lost their opening RL50 fixture to Leicestershire at Radlett.
Alex Lees is still available ahead of joining up with the England Test squad for their series against South Africa, while George Drissell and Mitchell Killeen could be in line to make their List A debuts for Durham.
Durham are without a number of players due to Hundred and injuries. Ben Raine and Matthew Potts are away with the Northern Superchargers, while David Bedingham, Matt Salisbury and Jonathan Bushnell are not available.
Paul Coughlin (Eppleton) and Sean Dickson (Felling) are due to play for their club sides in the North East Premier League shortly as they enter the final stages of rehabilitation and are expected to be available for selection soon in the Royal London Cup.
Squad v Middlesex (7 August)
Scott Borthwick, Graham Clark, Luke Doneathy, George Drissell, Oliver Gibson, Michael Jones, Mitchell Killeen, Alex Lees, Tom Mackintosh, Nic Maddinson, Stanley McAlindon, Chris Rushworth, Liam Trevaskis
Words from Neil Killeen
It’s certainly wasn’t the performance that that we want to put out first up in the competition against Surrey. The lads will be thinking in the dressing room how do we move on from the result. We certainly lost to the better team on the day. There are a lot of areas that we need to improve on and improve quickly. We’ve got to play a lot better cricket than we did today. I don’t think it was a tricky track to bat on, it was doing a little bit early on and we knew that because we would have bowled first if we won the toss. Sometimes you have to get through that early part of the innings and put a score on the board. We knew that the score we had was below-par. Without a doubt a lot of catches went down and that’s not good enough. That’s an area on which we pride ourselves on and one that we will work on over the next few days to put it right. We haven’t got it right today, but we have to for our next game on Sunday.
Middlesex
Coach: Richard Johnson
Captain: Stephen Eskinazi
2021 leading run scorer: Stephen Eskinazi & Max Holden (201)
2021 leading wicket taker: Ethan Bamber (10)
Overseas players: Pieter Malan (South Africa)
Key player: Stephen Eskinazi is a fine player and has enjoyed his summer so far in all formats for Middlesex. He got his RL50 campaign off with a half century against Leicestershire earlier this week, while he also scored a huge 160 against Hertfordshire in the national showcase fixture last Monday.
Under the radar: Joe Cracknell knows the region very well as a current Durham University student. His breakthrough season came last year where he was one of the stars of the Hundred tournament playing for London Spirit. Known for his white ball exploits he already has 773 T20 runs from 32 runs with a highest score of 77. The right-hand bat has also had a successful time with Felling in the North East Premier League.
Young potential: Luke Hollman is a fine young cricketer who has also impressed in all formats for Middlesex this summer. A former England under-19s cricketer, he took 3/43 in the opening game against Leicestershire.
Match Centre
The Club’s match centre will be in operation for the fixture with live scorecards, statistics & video highlights as they happen. You can watch the game live via Durham’s match centre and Durham Cricket YouTube channel.