KEITH Barker continued to torment Durham as only he can when he took three wickets in six balls this morning to leave them on 182 for eight at lunch.

Paul Collingwood, unbeaten on 66, provided the only serious resistance until Chris Rushworth joined him an unbroken stand of 51.

The first-ball exit of Phil Mustard can only raise further questions about how long he can survive in the four-day side.

Despite his T20 half-century on Friday, the Colonel is batting as though wielding a piece of lead piping in the championship with 21 runs in his last five innings.

Collingwood countered Barker by batting out of his crease with an open stance and survived two big appeals, for caught behind and lbw. He also went very close to chopping on against Richard Jones on two.

Otherwise he was in no great difficulty and once eight wickets were down he began to give Boyd Rankin the charge.

Despite advancing to meet two short balls he was able to clobber them to the cover boundary and when the Irishman dropped even shorter he was smashed over point for six.

That took the Durham skipper to 50 off 61 balls and one of his eight fours had been cheekily steered over the slips off Rankin.

Michael Richardson was dropped by wicketkeeper Tim Ambrose off the second ball when play began at 11.15 and two balls later Calum MacLeod shaped to drive Jones and got an inside edge into his leg stump.

Richardson played well for 33 until he played back to a Barker delivery slanted across him and edged to third slip.

The next ball was in the blockhole and had Mustard lbw and a similar delivery knocked out Paul Coughlin's middle stump.

Another full ball, this time from Rikki Clarke after Barker finally rested, had John Hastings lbw for 14 before Rushworth put bat to ball to reach 15 at lunch.