Lewis revives battling season

Not the greatest of seasons this one for Durham opening batsman Jon Lewis. Or at least that seemed the case until today, when his sparkling century guided Durham out of early trouble and into a position of respectability on day one of the County Championship clash with Somerset at Chester-le-Street.

On an afternoon ravaged by rain, Lewis (113*) registered his first century in just over twelve months to guide his team to the mark of 215/5 after it had won the toss. His only two half-centuries this season had both come against Yorkshire, and at no stage this summer had he previously compiled anything exceeding 66. Notwithstanding such a run of outs, though, he was solid off both the front and back foot today, and offered only one semblance of a chance - that coming on 81 as he edged a Paul Jarvis delivery between first and second slips.

For Somerset, the home team's early woes had been inspired by some fine bowling from Graham Rose (2/28). It had been the right arm paceman indeed who had lured Michael Gough (9) to edge a comfortable catch to second slip with the total at 17 and then attracted an inside edge on to the stumps from Simon Katich (0) with the very next ball.

Following the intervention of rain (over a period in mid-afternoon sufficiently lengthy to wash away thirty-one overs of action), and in the wake of a cracking burst which had seen sixty-one runs smoked from eight wayward overs from Jarvis (1/66) and Jamie Grove (1/39), Rose then put his teammates' horror spell into even greater perspective. He beat the bats of both Paul Collingwood (34) and Nick Speak (7) repeatedly before Keith Parsons (1/21) and then Jarvis respectively claimed those wickets to revive Somerset's fortunes.

There followed another period of Lewis-led consolidation for Durham before Muazam Ali, who had reached the giddy heights of 18 after totalling seven runs from four previous first-class innings, irrationally launched a wild hook straight to Jarvis (playing in his first Championship match of the season) at long leg in the final over of the day.