Derbyshire v Durham RLODC preview

After two fine wins over the weekend, Derbyshire's star appears, for the time being at least, to be in the ascendant. Truth be told, there are some good players in this squad and if they deliver with greater frequency, better results will be the consequence.

Hamish Rutherford was absolutely right in his post-Worcester interview, that different players have contributed to the two successes and that is the way it has to be from here. We don't have stand out stars and we all remember what happened when we had stellar names like Amla and Dilshan in the side. We do have some very good cricketers and some highly promising ones, so if they all do their bit we will give anyone a game.

Most immediately that is Durham, at the 3aaa County Ground tomorrow. They hit the highest score of the first round of games, racking up 340 against Leicestershire, although the ante has been upped a little today with Nottinghamshire posting 445-8 against Northamptonshire, which I think I can safely say, as I write, will be a winning score...

There's an unchanged thirteen for Derbyshire tomorrow - and rightly so - with my guess being that the same side will take the field as at Worcester. If we can bowl with similar discipline, field well and then bat with a common sense that hasn't always been the preserve of Derbyshire, we could keep the winning streak going.

As for Durham, they have a very strong top three in Stoneman, Mustard and Borthwick, while Paul Collingwood remains the ballast in the middle order. I think their batting better than the bowling, but there are one or two omissions from their squad for tomorrow. Graham Onions is one, Ben Stokes another and we will be lining up against eleven from this squad:

Stoneman (c), Mustard (wk), Borthwick, Clark, Collingwood, Pringle, MacLeod, Jennings, Arshad, Harrison, Rushworth, Coughlin, McCarthy, Richardson

A tough game for sure and three wins on the bounce would be quite something, but the talent is there and a growing self-belief never does any harm as long as it isn't combined with complacency.

We'll see soon enough.