The advertising posters for the second npower Test, which starts at the Riverside tomorrow, depict Kevin Pietersen playing a crunching pull shot in front of a full house on a bright, sunny day. Provided that Pietersen fulfils his part of the deal, the posters will be one third accurate, perhaps two thirds if better weather replaces the bitter conditions that forced the West Indies players to huddle together like maroon-clad Emperor penguins on the outfield yesterday.

The full house is far from assured, especially for the first day’s play, for which only 3,000 tickets have been sold. At a ground with a capacity of just under 16,000, fewer than 30,000 seats have been sold for the match as a whole, around half of which are for the third day on Saturday. For the television cameramen charged with picking out densely populated areas of the ground, it could be a challenging few days.

David Harker, the Durham chief executive, believes that the difficulties involved with selling this game show that the time has come to cut ticket prices, which range from £30 to £65 for this match. That would also involve the ECB revising the way in which it invites Test grounds to bid for matches, based on the amount of revenue they will provide.

“When sales are suffering, you’ve got to look at the price of the tickets and maybe we’ve reached the limit on those,” Harker said yesterday. “The challenge is that we have to bid for these games and that bid is a function of the size of the crowd and ticket prices.

“If the game wants to move to lower-priced tickets, which I would certainly support, that’s got to be reflected in the bidding process as well.”

A further hindrance for this game has been the air of uncertainty that hung over this Test series until December, when West Indies were finally confirmed as England’s opponents. Zimbabwe had originally been scheduled to tour, then they were replaced by Sri Lanka, who pulled out because their leading players were contracted to the Indian Premier League. This late confirmation denied Durham the chance to sell tickets during games at the Riverside last summer, their prime selling time.

“Ordinarily, we try to put our tickets on sale about a year before the game,” Harker said. “This game went on sale the week before Christmas. But the credit crunch is also a part of it, we’re early in the season and football is still being played, and there are other bigger cricket events to come this summer with the Ashes and the World Cup. We won’t make a loss on the Test, but we’ll probably come in at around 60 per cent of our budget.”

The likelihood that England will name an unchanged team tomorrow increased when Ryan Sidebottom and Ian Bell, the two players added to the squad for this game, were released to play for their counties in the Friends Provident Trophy yesterday. Both players were due to rejoin the squad last night, Sidebottom after driving from the Rose Bowl, where Nottinghamshire lost to Hampshire, then being chauffeured from his home in Nottingham to Chester-le-Street by his wife.

Assuming that Sidebottom does not play, Stuart Broad will continue as England’s new-ball bowler after he was clocked above 90mph on the speed gun during the first Test at Lord’s. As his slender frame completes its development, Broad, 22 believes that he is becoming better equipped to cope with the physical demands of Test cricket.

“I’m certainly stronger, so that’s going to help,” Broad said at the launch of an npower Urban Cricket facility. “But it’s going to help not so much with my first spell as coming back after 80 overs with the second new ball and getting up to 85 or 86mph then.”

In England’s recent contests with West Indies, Broad has watched and learnt from Fidel Edwards about the importance of subtly varying his pace. “Fidel varies his speed quite a lot,” Broad said. “He’ll bowl a length ball and then go really full and make that a yard quicker, which can really surprise you as a batsman. Bowlers who vary their speeds across 5 and 6mph have been quite effective. That’s something I’m trying to implement.”