“Declare man, declare! We’ve got more than enough!” Seaham Harbour 2s are playing Whitburn 2s in The Durham Senior League. The Whitburn captain has bludgeoned 169 runs of his side’s 220. Thirty five overs have gone and his team-mates are pressuring him to declare. He does. They lose. Captaincy, eh?
I was probably in a minority of one at the start of the 2013 cricket season and actually thought Durham might cause a few surprises. The rest of the media – and many writers I am yet to see at a county match – had been queuing up to write them off.
They and the bookies had Durham as favourites to go down, while Surrey would be champions. But sport doesn’t work that way. Cricket least of all. Surrey finished bottom and went down having managed one win.
The seeds for Durham’s success in 2013 may well have been sown during a Members’ Forum the previous summer. It was late July and Durham were playing Middlesex. They were still without a win and this was their 10th championship match. The weather had been a nightmare most of the season and they struggled to get games finished in one of the wettest years on record.
2012 began with a heatwave in the March. It broke records galore. It was also a con. I was in Alicante. It was cold there, but back in the UK people were going to work in shorts. One national newspaper, which remains fascinated to this day by ridiculously outlandish weather stories, proclaimed it to be “The Barbecue Summer”. It wasn’t.
By the time I returned from that pre-season holiday on April 1st it was snowing at Newcastle International Airport. And it remained wet and miserable for most of the year. And under the leadership of skipper Phil Mustard, Durham just couldn’t get over the line.
In early June, at home to Warwickshire, rain wiped out the final day and a half when Durham were on top. It was generally felt they would have gone on to win. But it was another chance gone. During the game Paul Collingwood got struck on the hand by Warwickshire fast bowler Chris Wright. It had been a hell of a battle between the two and Colly was in a cast by the time I saw him again that evening – at a Coldplay concert in Sunderland.
The draw with The Bears also heralded the start of the T20 so Durham weren’t due to play in the county championship again for a few weeks. The Colonel was relieved of his duties. Durham’s new skipper couldn’t play in the next championship game because of that hand. It was a rain-affected draw at New Road. He did play in a low-scoring defeat at soggy Arundel.
So, when Middlesex rolled into town in late July Durham were in relegation trouble. They drew four of the first nine but pressure was building on the winless team. Maybe the new skipper would make the difference? Durham were bowled out for just 102.
That night I hosted a Members’ Forum in the pavilion with Paul Collingwood. I wasn’t looking forward to it. There was anger among spectators at the direction the team was heading in. The keyboard warriors were in force too on the various forums.
Paul wasn’t having any of it though. He said there was too much negativity. Durham were behind in the game but they could still win it. And a win could lead to two. They bowled Middlesex out later in the game for 102 and won by 15 runs. It was just the boost they needed. Surrey were beaten by an innings and 38 runs in the next game and with victories against Notts, Worcestershire and Sussex to follow the players finished on a high.
There was also a draw with Lancashire. Durham were motoring by the end of the season and in my mind it set the scene for the year to come. By the time they had beaten the university in the annual pre-season opener it was six wins in seven First Class matches. I am not known for my positive outlook at times, but I was thinking this was championship form.
Maybe at the start of 2013 the experts were still thinking about Durham’s struggles the previous year. But it seems none of them took into account their brilliant recovery though.
The opening game of 2013 began with Durham on -2.5 points. Two and a half points might not sound much but in 2006 they only stayed up by half a point. That was the punishment for breaching the ECB salary cap the year before.
The club became the first to be fined under the measures which had been introduced in 2010. At the time it was put down to a minor administrative matter caused by the sudden return of England players they weren’t expecting to see.
Looking back this was a warning things were not all they should have been from a financial point of view. There hadn’t been a pre-season tour either. The players had a bonding trip up a mountain in Scotland instead. And while the club had to borrow money from the local council to make sure the Ashes test was a success later that year, most people had no idea about that at the start of the year.
The opening game saw Durham pull off a tight win at home to Somerset in a week where the temperature didn’t get above four degrees. I remember being out for the toss and Colly asking if anyone knew how to spin the ball on ice? With the wind chill it was really zero. Preparing up a mountain was probably the best thing they could have done.
The next game was at Edgbaston. Durham’s first innings featured 101 from Scott Borthwick. It was his first century. He came in at number eight and scored it on his 23rd birthday. But Durham were eventually set a target of 413 to win and were blown away.
Their 94 all out was their lowest score against Warwickshire. Chris Wright took 6-31 in 16 overs, seven of which were maidens. But would that be a one-off or a sign of things to come?
I won’t forget Yorkshire at home as long as I live. And neither will the skipper. The record books said it couldn’t be done. The fans were shouting for a declaration and once he thought he was absolutely certain the visitors were too far behind, Paul Collingwood called his boys off the field.
Yorkshire had been set 336 to win in a little under four sessions. Although time was on their side, nobody had pulled off such a chase in Chester-le-Street. They were 23-2 after five balls of the final day and it seemed Durham were heading for a win. The best the visitors could hope for, at that point and given the speed they were going, was a gutsy draw. But my co-commentator David Callaghan had a feeling things would change later in the afternoon.
The Tykes would assess the situation at tea, he said and could give it a go. At tea they were 212-4 and needed another 124 to win. But they also had in their ranks a young lad called Joe Root. He had immense skill and a touch of fortune.
I think he was run out on 86. Phil Mustard looked to have broken the stumps before the bat got across the line. But crucially umpire Alex Wharf was behind the keeper and said he could not see clearly so gave the batsman the benefit. There was also a big shout for a glove behind. It wasn’t given.
Root faced 283 balls for his 182 and was eventually out from what turned out to be the penultimate ball of the game. By then The Tykes only needed one run. Having been promoted the previous summer it was clear Yorkshire, unlike Surrey, were going to be a force to be reckoned with in 2013.
That defeat could have been massive for Durham. Especially on the back of the hammering at Edgbaston. They weren’t set to meet Yorkshire again until a fixture in Scarborough in late August. That meant the possibility of chasing the leaders for the rest of the season.
As Paul Collingwood showed, sometimes it’s difficult to get things like declarations right. Twice in the summer of 2017 I think he waited too long to have a go at Kent and both times their last pair saw out the game. Equally he was more than willing to have a go at Swansea the same season. You win some you lose some.
The skipper of Whitburn Seconds was my dad Barry Emmerson. He never listened to his team-mates again after that day in Seaham.
Despite Durham’s defeat by Yorkshire in Chester-le-Street there would be plenty of moments to savour before the showdown on the coast later that year.
2013 was the first time Durham won 10 games. They also created a new club record of five consecutive victories, which really spearheaded their drive for the title.
Next time in part 2, we have a sleepless night on a Nottingham pavement. A first at The Oval and those five in a row.