MICHAEL Lumb’s charmed life prevented Durham from making deep inroads into Nottinghamshire’s pursuit of 375 to win.

They were 83 for three at tea with Lumb still there on 39, despite being given a torrid time by Chris Rushworth.

With his score on 17 the left-hander had just reached 10,000 first-class runs when he survived a confident lbw appeal from Rushworth then edged successive balls through the slips for four.

The first dropped slightly short of Scott Borthwick and the second perfectly bisected first and second slip at catchable height.

Then Lumb played and missed a couple of times and Rushworth had to be content with having Steven Mullaney lbw from his nine-over spell.

Mullaney got after John Hastings in his opening four-over burst and when Paul Coughlin replaced the Australian he struggled to control the swing.

But his mixture of good and bad balls kept the batsmen alert and James Taylor was a little too watchful when he padded up and was lbw for six.

Perhaps he is keeping his powder dry for Saturday’s Royal London Cup semi-final and the same might be said of Samit Patel.

He made 11 before driving a return catch off the fourth ball when Hastings returned in place of Rushworth.

Riki Wessels, the second man in Division One after Adam Lyth to 1,000 championship runs, was on 11 at tea.