Nottinghamshire Director of Cricket Mick Newell anticipates an intriguing battle between Hashim Amla and Steve Harmison in Nottinghamshire’s LV= County Championship match against Durham.

Amla will represent Notts for the final time this season before flying to the West Indies to join South Africa’s one day squad and will be keen to sign off in style.

“We’ve had three consecutive wins, Hashim has made a major contribution in tall three of them and I have got every confidence in his ability to do the same against Durham,” said Newell.

“He’s the number one batsman in our team and Steve Harmison is the number one bowler in theirs so I’m sure Hashim will be targeted but he’ll cope with that.”

Nottinghamshire and Durham have occupied the top two places in the LV= County Championship for the past two seasons and although the 2010 race remains wide open, a win for either team at Trent Bridge would provide a timely boost.

“It’s far too early to talk about any team being title contenders but if we can beat Durham and open up a 50-point gap then clearly that will be beneficial to our chances of succeeding this season.

“I haven’t highlighted this game to the players as being any more important than any other but there will be a lot of interest in it because of the recent history of these teams in this competition.

“I think it will prove to be a battle of two seam attacks and I expect the wicket to be broadly similar to the two we’ve already played on. There will be some grass on it but it will be reasonably dry and won’t spin much.”

Darren Pattinson should play having had a chance to rest a groin tweak with Andy Carter on standby to deputise. Steven Mullaney keeps his place after scoring 100 not out on his LV= County Championship debut for Notts with Bilal Shafayat and Neil Edwards set to open the batting.

Nottinghamshire (from): Neil Edwards, Bilal Shafayat, Mark Wagh, Hashim Amla, Samit Patel, Ali Brown, Chris Read (C/W), Steven Mullaney, Paul Franks, Darren Pattinson, Charlie Shreck, Andy Carter