Durham travel to Trent Bridge tomorrow [10:30am] in their final fixture of the 2022 season, as they take on promotional hopefuls Nottinghamshire in the LV=Insurance County Championship.
Durham have enjoyed a positive end to the summer with back-to-back wins in the County Championship with victories over Leicestershire and Sussex last week, and now head to the East Midlands with confidence behind them.
One change is made to the Durham squad from last week’s win at Seat Unique Riverside as Michael Jones drops out having joined up with the Scotland squad for the ICC T20 World Cup in Australia.
Graham Clark is added to the 13-player squad for the first time this summer having scored 111 last week for Durham Seconds against Nottinghamshire at Lady Bay.
Alex Lees remains unavailable for selection having sustained a finger injury while batting for England in the third Test against South Africa at the Oval.
Tomorrow’s opponents Nottinghamshire, lost last week to Worcestershire inside three-days, losing only their second game of the County Championship season and with Middlesex beating Leicestershire, their advantage at the top of the Division 2 table is cut to 9 points.
Durham moved up one spot to 5th place sitting on 182 points, just 1 point behind Worcestershire in 4th place with 183 points.
Squad v Nottinghamshire (26-29 September)
David Bedingham, Chris Benjamin +, Scott Borthwick*, Jonathan Bushnell, Graham Clark, Paul Coughlin, Sean Dickson, George Drissell, Oliver Gibson, Nic Maddinson, Matthew Potts, Ben Raine, Liam Trevaskis
Words from Neil Killeen
The win over Sussex was brilliant backing up the win at Leicestershire, the lads have put in a solid performance over the past 3 and a bit days. Our mantra throughout this game was to give us a the best chance of winning come Friday and that is exactly what we did. Each day against Sussex we played consistent cricket for long periods of time and kept being relentless with both bat and ball. We are going to go to Nottingham and try and win that game of cricket, we are riding high at the moment with two good wins and hopefully we can make it three wins out of three to end the season. We will go with a positive mindset and hopefully we can get across the line.
The Opposition
Coach: Peter Moores
Captain: Steven Mullaney
Last year’s performance: 3rd (Division 1)
2021 leading run scorer: BT Slater (837, 39.85)
2021 leading wicket taker: LJ Fletcher (66, 38.2)
Overseas players: Dane Paterson (South African),
Key player: Ben Slater had an outstanding 2021 season where he averaged 40 with the bat scoring 837 runs with a top score of 114 not out, scoring 2 centuries and 5 fifties. He has scored 672 runs in the County Championship this summer with 2 fifties and 1 century with a best of 225 not out.
Under the radar: Flourishing in T20 cricket, Joe Clarke impressed Nottinghamshire in the Blast and also for Melbourne Stars. However, he’s also had a solid 2 county cricket seasons, averaging 36, with 2 first class 100s. He has this year scored 606 runs top scoring with 95 and averaging 33.67.
Young potential: 22-year-old Matthew Montgomery has played 7 first-class games, three of them coming for Nottinghamshire this season. A top order batter, he scored 80 on his Nottinghamshire debut against Glamorgan, having previously played for KwaZulu-Natal in the CSA Provincial 3 day cup.
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 Nottinghamshire Cricket YouTube channel.