Styris about to join Durham

Scott Styris will join Durham as an overseas player this week, bringing to three the number of New Zealand squad members in county cricket this season. Styris will be hoping for a less dramatic trip than last year, when he injured his back while playing for Middlesex.

He aggravated the problem at the Champions Trophy and ended up missing the home series against Sri Lanka and the start of the CB Series. However, Lindsay Crocker, the New Zealand team manager, said he had no issue with Styris returning to England as he would be with Durham for only two months from June 1.

"This year he goes away with a pretty good bill of health and we have no concerns," Crocker said. "He'll still have about six weeks off before our next competition which is the Twenty20 World Cup, so it's a nice length of break for him."

Styris joins his former New Zealand team-mate Paul Wiseman at Durham, and he will be the county's second overseas player alongside Australia's Michael Di Venuto. Durham, who are second on the points table, will be hoping Styris brings with him the form that made him New Zealand's leading run-scorer at the World Cup.

"He took his cricket to a different level in the World Cup and he's learned a lot, things like batting into the later stages of a match," Crocker said. "He wants to keep that momentum going and keep putting the things he learned into practice."

Three New Zealanders are now listed as overseas players in the county competition. The others are Stephen Fleming, who is the captain of Nottinghamshire, and Hamish Marshall, who is at Gloucestershire.