Recently in Durham CCC Category

I have just been asked by someone in the makeshift press tent in Basingstoke where it has all gone wrong for Durham. My initial reaction was to blame injuries at the start of the season, but the problems probably run a little deeper than that.

The harsh reality is, if Durham lose to Hampshire over the next four days - I doubt the game will last that long, they don't tend to at club grounds like the wonderfully named May's Bounty - they are going to be in relegation trouble.

I'm not sure what the biggest concern is at Durham this summer, a fading defence of the County Championship or the brilliantly dull new name for the Riverside.

When Durham launched a competition to rename the County Ground last month I had visions of something romantic involving Prince Bishops, but what we got was the corporate monstrosity the Emirates Durham International Cricket Ground.

It doesn't exactly roll off the tongue does it? It doesn't really fit into the space constraints of a newspaper like The Journal either and I can't imagine radio commentators are going to stick to it given how laboured it sounds.

There are times as a sports writer when you know you have witnessed something special, history in the making as it were, and I am delighted to say I've had precisely that feeling in Canterbury this week.

Durham have had their problems this season and it is already looking as though their bid for a third successive County Championship title is doomed to fail given the excellent start to the season by Yorkshire and Lancashire.

I might be wrong, there is still a hell of a lot of Championship cricket to play either side of our new mid-summer infatuation with Twenty20 competition, but without an overseas batsman at number three and with injuries to so many of their first-choice bowlers, it is going to take a stunning turn around.

The County season normally starts at a deserted Lord's Cricket Ground under grey, rain-threatening skies so who can blame the MCC and the ECB for deciding a change was needed?

So off we've popped to Abu Dhabi where the annual curtain raiser between last year's Champions, Durham, and an invitational MCC select side is being played in front of even fewer fans in the middle of the desert.

Oh well, at least the sun is shining. Actually, come to think of it, it's shining a little too brightly and a little too hotly, we are English after all. Abu Barbeque would be a better name for it.

Graham Onions had better be careful. If he carries on like this people are going to start thinking he is an all rounder and the next thing you know people will be calling him the next Andrew Flintoff.

I'm never entirely sure I'd want to be the next anyone to be honest. I'd rather be the new me, which knowing Graham will be exactly how he feels.

He has enough on his plate at the moment trying to establish himself as a front line Test match bowler. He doesn't need to be living up to anyone's expectations other than his own.

They do not get the attention lavished on our football teams and they do not get anywhere near the same financial rewards for their success, but Durham are an example to them all.

Durham may play in front of small crowds in a small town just off the A1, but they are the flag bearers for North East sport and it is about time they got the praise their efforts deserve.

After years of struggle, firstly to become a first class county and then to be taken seriously once that battle had been won, Durham are in danger of becoming cricket's Manchester United.

England's hopes of regaining the Ashes may have nose-dived following a dreadful opening day's play at Headingley, but the fourth Test of the series will be a successful one for Durham whatever happens.

For those unaware of events at Chester-le-Street this season, Durham are currently top of the Liverpool Victoria County Championship and have a wonderful chance of retaining the title they won for the first time last year.

And their position as the dominant force in County Cricket has been underlined by the fact they have three of their players starring - if that's the right word - for England against Australia in this match.

It has not been the easiest of seasons for Durham, but they are starting to look like the team to beat again in the County Championship following their comprehensive destruction of Freddie Flintoff and Lancashire.

Well, at least they will be until the England selectors, having seen us go 2-0 down to Australia in the Ashes, decide to replace the injured Graham Onions with the in-form Stephen Harmison and Durham are left to get on with things the best they can.

There is no doubt that, with Onions and Harmison bowling in tandem, Durham are a frightening prospect for any county batsman trotting out to face them. They were, at times, unplayable against Lancashire.

It has not been a good start to the season for Durham, on or off the pitch. With a struggling side failing to repeat last year's heroics and empty seats all over Chester-le-Street for their one and only Test match of the summer, Durham's reputation is taking a battering.

It is sometimes called 'Second Album syndrome', the difficult task of trying to replicate the brilliance which brought you so much success and critical acclaim.

It is a frustrating, infuriating situation to be in and one which can seem impossible to escape from as all the things which seemed so easy to achieve suddenly take on Everest-like proportions.

Graham Onions is a headline writer's dream, although I'm sure that did not come into the selector's thinking when they named the Durham fast bowler in the England team to play the West Indies.

If it was, they would have picked his Durham teammate Phil Mustard as well, providing lots of unfunny people with a reason to chuckle about Onions and Mustard being too hot to handle and so on.

In truth, Onions has been rewarded for an impressive start to the season with his county after two or three years on the periphery of the international set up. It is a richly-deserved call up and it will be fascinating to see how he does at Lord's.

It will also be fascinating to see what sort of response it gets from Steve Harmison...