Durham Cricket Lead High Performance Coach James Franklin has named a 13 man squad for Durham’s final LV=Insurance County Championship match of the season.
Durham travel to Bristol to face Gloucestershire for tomorrow’s Division 2 clash and will be looking to end their 2021 campaign off on a positive note following a successful red ball campaign this term.
On the back of last weeks draw against Northamptonshire, Durham have dropped to third in the Division 2 table with an average points tally of 13,67, while tomorrow’s opponents occupy the second place spot with an average of 14.
The race for Chris Rushworth to become the leading wicket taker in the country and for David Bedingham to be the top run scorer in the country is still on going into the final round to matches. Sussex’ Tom Haines remains the leading run scorer in the country with 1132 runs with Bedingham now in third place o 1002, 130 runs behind the left hander, Haines.
Rushworth is seven wickets behind Luke Fletcher of Nottingham to be the countries leading wicket taker. Fletcher of Nottingham has 63 scalps in comparison to Rushworth’s 56. Nottinghamshire face Yorkshire in tomorrow’s Division 1 clash.
Squad vs Gloucestershire (21-24 September)
David Bedingham, Scott Borthwick (c), Paul Coughlin, Graham Clark, Ned Eckersley (wk), Michael Jones, Alex Lees, Matthew Potts, Ben Raine, Chris Rushworth, Matt Salisbury, Liam Trevaskis, Stuart Poynter
Words from James Franklin
We dropped to third with our draw with Northamptonshire but we have another opportunity this week to move up the table for our final match of the season. We know Essex have have had another superb campaign and are in top spot but hopefully we have an opportunity to move up in the table again.
Last time we played Gloucestershire was back in 2019 and they beat us convincingly and there team hasn’t changed much from then so we are expediting a tough challenge down there, we are very much a different team to 2019 and particularly in that period when we played Gloucestershire two years ago, but we can’t go into this game thinking we are automatically going to win.
We have to work through that process, which we have been very good at this season so we all look forward to Tuesday. We all start on zero again and we all have to score that first run and take that first wicket and the boys all feel that if we can have a strong performance this week we can sign of 2021 with a good feeling.
The Opposition
Coach: Ian Harvey (interim)
Captain: Chris Dent
Last Year’s Performance: Fifth (Central Group)
2021 Leading Runscorer: James Bracey (667 runs)
2021 Leading Wicket Taker: Ryan Higgins (50)
Overseas players: Zafar Gohar (Pakistan)
Key man: Chris Dent has scored consistent runs over the past five seasons, he has scored 538 runs this season in the Championship.
Flies under the radar: Tom Lace could be one to watch having followed Ryan Higgins and George Scott down the M4 from Middlesex. A highly-rated 22-year-old batsman.
Best Player Under 24: James Bracey’s talent has been obvious for some time and he’s been involved in senior England squads over the past 12 months. Signed a new three-year deal this winter.
Match Centre
The Club’s match centre will be in operation for the fixtures with live scorecards, statistics & video highlights as they happen. You can watch the game live via the Gloucestershire CCC YouTube channel.