Harmer turns game on its head as fightback extends Essex home rule
By Tim Wigmore Essex (96 & 330) bt Durham (259 & 123) by 44 runs
Nine hundred and 56 days since last suffering a County Championship defeat at Chelmsford, Essex showed the qualities that have sustained them during their remarkable run.
Durham had bowled Essex out for 96 and then earned a first-innings lead of 163. But three days and 40 minutes of excellent Durham cricket were undone in an abject hour as the hosts took seven wickets for 40 runs to turn a probable defeat into a 44-run victory.
As so often, this was an Essex victory authored by Simon Harmer. The South African off-spinner took five of Durham’s last seven wickets to end with match figures of 10 for 136 and so extended his first-class record for Essex to 263 wickets at 19.8 apiece.
At Chelmsford, Harmer now has 168 first-class wickets at 17.3, simultaneously offering unerring control and relentless threat. His case for being one of the best overseas players in Essex’s history is surely indisputable.
On the fourth morning Jack Burnham and Scott Borthwick’s 63-run partnership for the fourth wicket made Durham favourites: with 85 runs required, they still had seven wickets in hand.
While Borthwick played with
meticulous defence, there was a buccaneering feel to Burnham’s stroke play, which extended to playing Harmer with panache. Two balls after lofting Harmer for four, Burnham tried to whip a delivery through the on side and picked out Essex captain Tom Westley at long on. It changed the complexion of the game.
Durham’s position of ascendancy was hard won but easily lost; Essex sensed their moment and seized it. Borthwick, who had taken 92 balls to reach double figures, was trapped lbw, playing back on his crease, in Harmer’s following over.
And so Durham’s admirable toil gave way to the remorseless logic of doing battle at Chelmsford. If Jamie
Porter and Sam Cook, Essex’s formidable new-ball pair, do not get you, then Harmer will. Cook found seam movement to remove Stuart Poynter for one, leaving Harmer to whittle away at the tail. Porter uprooted Matt Salisbury’s middle stump to clinch the victory.
Save for Essex’s two-wicket win over Kent last year, this was the closest that any visiting team had come to leaving Chelmsford victorious since Surrey’s triumph in September 2018.
There is no indication of this run being broken. While Essex’s batting is less formidable than their attack, Alastair Cook’s streak of not passing 15 in their opening two games will surely end soon.
For the rest of Group One, the terrifying prospect is that Essex’s attack will now be further enhanced, with Peter Siddle available from their next game at Warwickshire on Thursday.
As for Durham, in many ways, this game merely showed their strengths and weaknesses at their most extreme: a seam attack ideally suited to the championship being played at the margins of the summer, but a batting order with a penchant for collapsing.