Durham will be looking to bounce back when they take on Somerset tomorrow in the Vitality County Championship at Seat Unique Riverside.
Ryan Campbell’s side return to Chester le Street for the first time in three weeks and will be aiming to put last week’s defeat to Lancashire behind them.
Durham were involved in a thrilling final day at Blackpool, unable to chase down a county record fourth innings score of 475 to win, falling 60 runs short, as David Bedingham and Ollie Robinson scored fine centuries in 216 partnership for the fourth wicket and taking Durham to 313 for three in pursuit of 475 to win.
Campbell has named a 14-player squad for tomorrow’s clash with Somerset which will see Ben Stokes make his return to Chester le Street for the first time in two years – with his last outing being against Glamorgan in May 2022.
Ben McKinney is named in a County Championship squad for the first time this season, while Daniel Hogg also returns to the squad.
Bedingham reached 7000 first-class runs when in action last time out and is the Division One leading run scorer with 694 runs at 86.75.
Durham dropped to seventh in the Division One table on Monday and sit with 64 points, while Somerset have two wins and sit second with 96 points.
Words from Ryan Campbell
It’s been a pretty laid back approach to training this week, there’s been a lot of cricket going on these first couple of months and I don’t think you need to reinvent the wheel. We actually gave the lads another day off just to chill out and relax.
The Lancashire result was a disappointing result, but a very good game of cricket. There of course is a lot of “if only this, if only that, what if this happened”.
We were never going to go a whole season without losing a game, you’re never going to go a whole year ever without losing a game because the way we play and the way we want to play, we’re going to have to put games on the line.
We didn’t have that opportunity because we played poorly at times on the first few days, but looking back at it, we had no right to make 415 on the final day, the wicket was a snake pit at times! The fact that on that last day, there was not one word of “are we going to bat this out for a draw?”, we were always going to go for it!
England want their best players fit and world cricket wants to see them up and running, so it was lovely to have Ben Stokes back last week; he’s one of the greats of world cricket. The group loves having him around, and he loves being around here. We all know that one arm for Ben Stokes bleeds English colours, but if the other arm gets cut, I’m telling you it’s Durham colours.
Squad v Somerset (24-27 May)
Colin Ackerman, David Bedingham, Scott Borthwick*,Graham Clark, Paul Coughlin, Daniel Hogg, Alex Lees (vc), Ben McKinney, Callum Parkinson, Matthew Potts, Ben Raine, Ollie Robinson+, Ben Stokes, Peter Siddle