Onions stars in thriller

Durham coach Jon Lewis defended his side’s declaration as they ran out of time in a bid to force victory against Kent yesterday.

Sam Billings defied Durham, and their recordbreaker Graham Onions, in the Specsavers County Championship match at Chester-le-Street.

Set a more than challenging target of 371 in 56 overs, there were 28 overs left when Billings went in at 74-5. But while four more wickets fell he remained unbeaten on 70.

There were six overs left when Onions pinned Adam Milne lbw to break the record of 518 firstclass wickets for Durham, held since 2002 by left-arm seamer Simon Brown.

Another wicket went down but last man Mitch Claydon and Billings survived as Kent closed on 1849, leaving Durham to rue their belated declaration and accept their frustrating fate in a match which lost four sessions to the weather.

Lewis said: “We played a lot of good cricket in the match and we’re on a good unbeaten run, so we didn’t want to give them a chance.

“When you have a side nine down questions are always asked about the declaration, but the outstanding first spells by Onions and (Chris) Rushworth probably worked against us.

“We were hoping Kent would feel under pressure to go for it, but it knocked the stuffing out of them.”

Kent coach Matt Walker said: “We were surprised they batted on after lunch. We thought 300 was enough on a pitch which had enough in it for a quality bowling attack. I thought they would have wanted 65 overs, but it nearly worked for them.”