DURHAM'S Michael Di Venuto will be out for four to six weeks, leaving him very short of cricket before the Friends Provident Trophy final at Lord's on August 18.

The Tasmanian had two operations over the weekend on the ring finger of his left hand, which suffered ligament damage as well as a nasty break against Lancashire on Friday night.

While confident that Di Venuto will be fit to face Hampshire at Lord's, coach Geoff Cook admitted that the injury will make it more likely that Durham will try to persuade Scott Styris to stay.

"Scott has agreed with his family that he will return to New Zealand on August 1, but we will have to talk about it," said Cook.

"The rules don't allow temporary replacements for injured overseas players - only for those called away on international duty."

Durham will have their England players available at Lord's, and with Cook describing winning as "paramount" it is likely that every effort will be made to keep Styris.

The alternative is to replace him with another overseas man from August 1 for the rest of the season, and Durham might be alerted by Inzamam-ul-Haq's desire to play county cricket.

As he has retired from one-day international cricket, the Pakistan batsman will not be going to the inaugural Twenty20 World Championship in South Africa in September.

Cook said at the start of the season that there were no plans to sign a second overseas player, but the chance to bring in Styris for two months was taken in the hope that he might help Durham to win their first silverware as a first-class county.

He has been unable to improve their disappointing Twenty20 record, missing the only win from six scheduled games so far through a calf strain. He also has a knee problem, but he defied his injuries to play on Friday and Saturday.

In the last few seasons Durham's four-day performance has faded after the Twenty20, and their chances of avoiding a repeat will be hampered by Di Venuto's injury. He carried his bat twice in the first three games and his 174 runs in the last match at the Rose Bowl provided more than a third of the team's two-innings total.

He has scored 822 championship runs at 68.5 and will be desperate to play at Lord's and make a contribution in a competition in which he has a top score of 49.

Di Venuto will miss the back-to-back trips to Surrey and Sussex, starting at The Oval next Sunday, followed by the home match against Hampshire.

His earliest possible return would be against Warwickshire at Riverside in the four-day match starting on July 31. But it is more likely that the three-day game against Sri Lanka A the following week will be seen as the ideal chance to get him back into action.