AFTER the Lord Mayor’s Show came the back-to-earth debacle for Durham as they followed Saturday’s Royal London Cup triumph with an early collapse against the same opponents three days later.

They chose to bat on a sunny morning at Edgbaston and lost four wickets to their usual nemesis, Keith Barker, who took his first three in the space of seven balls.

It turned out that Gareth Breese hadn’t played his final match at Lord’s after all and after going to the crease at 43 for five in the 11th over he survived in partnership with Michael Richardson to take the score to 66 at lunch.

While Breese dug in to make four in 19 overs, Richardson took advantage of the occasional loose ball to reach 36.

He will again be keeping wicket as Durham have left out Phil Mustard. He has missed three of the last four championship games, and while he initially had a knee problem it now seems he has been dropped.

With Ben Stokes, Calum MacLeod and Peter Chase unavailable, Breese, Ryan Pringle and Mark Wood were drafted in.

After his three successive ducks, Keaton Jennings drove the third ball he faced to the cover boundary off Oliver Hannon-Dalby and there seemed to be no difficulties in the first four overs.

But with the score on 14 Mark Stoneman departed for eight when he shaped to drive Barker through mid-on and was beaten by swing to fall lbw.

The next two victims, Scott Borthwick and Gordon Muchall, both pushed forward and edged the third ball they faced to the slips.

Given his record against the new ball, it was strange to see Muchall going in so early after batting at seven recently.

Paul Collingwood suffered the same fate, while Jennings was caught behind for ten off Hannon-Dalby.