[onemorerun]

Three changes - Curran, Rossington and Gleeson replacing Duckett, Crook and Kleinveldt.

Durham 102-7 at lunch, obviously a good morning. Mystery is that Gleeson hasn't bowled - ok, as the commentators said, he 'hasn't been needed' but how do we know Durham wouldn't have been all out by now? Seems odd not to use your fastest bowler, but ignoring one particular bowler seems to be a common feature of Wakely's captaincy these days.

[Bucksman]

Three changes - Curran, Rossington and Gleeson replacing Duckett, Crook and Kleinveldt.
Seems odd not to use your fastest bowler, but ignoring one particular bowler seems to be a common feature of Wakely's captaincy these days.

Yes, we saw Wakely's habit of overlooking a bowler last week in the Middx second innings, during the Holden-Harris recovery, when Crook was not required by him to bowl a single over... it still might not have changed the result, but he was probably worth a go in the prevailing circumstances!

The rumours at the ground were that RK was playing his last match for the County, so who knows?? Overall, a good performance in the field, and David Ripley will no doubt say he would have settled for 129 all out at the start of play, despite the partial 7th wicket recovery. Credit to Procter, though, for his efforts.

Dare I say it, so far so good with the bat, although I still can't help thinking about last week!

[onemorerun]

Wakely dropped off each of his first two balls, but made it to 60 and Rossington showing what a miss he was for the t20.

We get to 189-5. How many batting points will we get? One is easy (even we can't fail to get 11 runs with 5 wickets in hand), fairly confident about two, maybe even three.

But wait - this is Northants. We lose five wickets for 9 runs and don't get any batting points at all. Pathetic.

[Den Buckett]

Wakely dropped off each of his first two balls, but made it to 60 and Rossington showing what a miss he was for the t20.

We get to 189-5. How many batting points will we get? One is easy (even we can't fail to get 11 runs with 5 wickets in hand), fairly confident about two, maybe even three.

But wait - this is Northants. We lose five wickets for 9 runs and don't get any batting points at all. Pathetic.

As I said yesterday, we can't win matches with this line-up. After the 4 fast bowlers were picked, it is no surprise that we crumbled this morning.

No doubt Durham will now set us a target that we fail to chase!

[onemorerun]

Agreed, but I wouldn't blame the bowlers.

This team has a last four of Hutton, Buck, Sanderson and Gleeson. I remember 'last fours' of say Sarfraz, Hodgson, Bedi and Griffiths (or Mallender and Tim Lamb), which were probably not much better. But the difference is of course that we don't today have the Steele's, Willey's, Mushtaq's, Lamb's, Capel's, Cook's, Larkins's, Bailey's etc etc.

You shouldn't have to pick bowlers according to whether they can bat. If the batsmen were even occasionally doing their job, the bowlers wouldn't need to put their pads on at all! This has gone on now for several seasons - even when we were (relatively) successful a few years ago, it was very often because the lower order rescued an innings.

[Den Buckett]

No I wouldn't blame the bowlers, but it certainly helps if you can at least bat down to 9 to give you a chance when the top order fails.

[Den Buckett]

Well what do I know? We win. Batting issues not resolved, but some much needed points.

[onemorerun]

Yes, a win. Perhaps if Durham had held their catches it would have been close. We all know there are some pretty poor teams in Division Two. A decent spinner would be nice, but generally I think the bowling is ok. That might change if we lose, and don't replace, Gleeson.

As we demonstrated last year, winning isn't everything - in the sense that you can win a lot of matches, but if you fail to get most of the possible batting points, you will not get promoted.

Our average first innings score is 230, and we've now got 10 batting points from 10 games (one rained off).

[Bucksman]

I would say this was a typically 'sporty' Chester-le-Street wicket, and the result represents some form of redemption for the notorious drubbing handed out to us in that Division 1 match in 2014... including Chris Rushworth's 15 wickets for very few runs, when we were (almost?) bowled out twice in one day!

The squandered batting point was about par for the course, considering the present team composition, and I suppose unlikely to make much difference given our still lowly position at this stage of the campaign. However, it is becoming a regular habit that needs to be broken.

Of course, it's purely hypothetical, but with the wasted winning opportunity at Chesterfield last month, followed by last week's Middlesex fiasco, this could have been the fifth victory in succession!

Rory Kleinveldt's departure is now confirmed and I gather there is rumour that Lancashire are sniffing after Richard Gleeson.