TWENTY-TWO yards of rolled grass may have caught Durham on the hop last week, but they have only themselves to blame for being put on the back foot in the title race.

Normally one of the country’s flattest batting tracks, a green tinge hoodwinked them into bowling first after winning the toss at Taunton, then reverted to type. But for spells on Saturday and Sunday morning it lived up to its pre-match promise, and most Durham batsmen were unable to cope.

In hindsight, they made some bad choices before this game started. They could have done with the dropped Scott Borthwick’s batting even more than his leg-spin on a pitch which helped Murali Kartik.

But it was not why Durham face losing top spot in the County Championship before their next match, at home to Nottinghamshire.

If the 11 selected had played to their potential, it would have been at worst another snore draw on the Taunton featherbed. Opener Will Smith followed the game’s outstanding catch with a belligerent 74 and a 114 which appeared to go a long way towards saving the match. But when each innings ended, Durham subsided.

With nightwatchman Mitchell Claydon playing his shots in a breezy 38, bowling looked as difficult as after lunch on day three, despite ominous cloud cover.

After three-quarters of an hour things changed when Smith drove at Kartik and was caught by Marcus Trescothick.

Gordon Muchall went in comical fashion, off his feet to a Charl Willoughby ball he jabbed down on. Uneven bounce was the pitch’s biggest threat, and Muchall was the first of three lbws to the South African. When Claydon was the second, after 82 balls’ resistance, the problems really started.

Paul Collingwood was fortunate an inside edge missed his stumps before Alfonso Thomas, who owed his first-innings 4-62 more to Steve Kirby’s bowling brilliance than his own, moved a ball beautifully inside Dale Benkenstein’s forward defensive to uproot middle stump for a duck.