[Ska'dForLife-WBA]

Day Two

Morning: A bright start to Friday, but wickets remained hard to come by. Resuming on 363-7, both batsmen came close to perishing early on, but hung on to carry Durham to a fourth batting point. Adam Finch dismissed Paul Coughlin LBW for 42 a short while later, and Ben Raine then pulled Dillon Pennington to deep midwicket for 71 to get the young man off the mark for the season, and perhaps mindful of the weather forecast, the hosts decided at that point that 425-9 was a suitable total on which to declare. They might well have regretted it as Ed Pollock opted to marmalise the opening bowlers left, right and centre, pushing the run-rate close to ten an over as he motored onto a rapid-fire 41 with nine boundaries, before a remarkable over from Matthew Potts yielded four byes, a slog-swept four, an LBW shout denied, a square cut for four, and a fierce delivery that finally rearranged the stumps of Pollock and brought the fun to an end. Lunch followed on 67-1.

Afternoon: The clouds descended, the floodlights came on, and Jake Libby showed genuine grit and fight to see off the new ball in testing conditions. Azhar Ali, whose pre-lunch cameo had approached a run a ball, was similarly watchful, but as the rain finally began to fall the umpires were perhaps guilty of capitulating to Durham gripes about the three wickets they lost to a gloomy new-ball spell on Thursday evening; stubbornly keeping the teams out in the middle, it wasn't until Azhar was adjudged LBW to Potts for 29 that a rain break was finally deemed necessary, curtailing the day's play on a low note.

Evening: No play possible due to rain.