Book lifts lid on Durham’s
BEHIND THE HEADLINES OF CLUB’S DEMISE
A NEW book lifts the lid on the fairy tale rise, and nightmare fall, of Durham County Cricket Club.
Called Five Trophies and Funeral, it is penned by sports writer and journalist Stuart Rayner, who has reported on the club since 2005 for the Sunday Sun, as well as The Journal and The Chronicle.
He could not have arrived at a better time. Since it became a first-class club in 1992, Durham had up until that point largely been the whipping boy of the county cricket scene.
For years they had adhered to former chairman Bill Midgley’s insistence that they did not spend a penny more than they had. Then, from 2004 to 2005, the mindset changed under his successor Clive Leach.
“His view was that the best way to make Durham a sustainable business was to invest on the field because that was the way to attract sponsors,” said Stuart.
In 2005, they brought in top Aussie batsman Michael Hussey and South African star Dale Benkenstein. The effect was immediate and they were promoted to the First Division at the end of the season. Two years later they were First Division champions for the first time.
Stuart said: “Up until then they had a lot of young players in the team who were to become good players but were struggling then.
“Mike Hussey and Dale Benkenstein, who went on to become captain when they won their first two trophies, basically passed on their knowledge to the younger players on how to win games.”
As the title of the book suggests, in their golden period with players of the calibre of Paul Collingwood, Steve Harmison, Liam Plunkett and Graham Onions, to name but a few, they won five trophies – three First Division titles in 2008, 2009 and 2013, the 2007 Friends Provident Trophy and the Royal London One Day Cup in 2014.
Their Riverside stadium was elevated to Test match status in 2003 and, in 2007, Collingwood scored a century there for England against West Indies – the first local Durham player ever to score a Test century at Riverside. However, it all came at a cost. After falling £7.5m in debt and facing possible liquidation, the club appealed to the game’s governing body, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), for help. The help came, but with penalties that many connected to the club felt were too severe. In short, as Stuart puts it, “Durham got a kicking”.
The ECB agreed to take on half of that debt – the rest was dealt with via a loan from Durham County Council – but the ECB said, despite finishing fourth in the 2016 season, Durham were to be relegated. Worse still, their first season back in Division Two would start with a 48-point deduction.
As this made promotion in that first year virtually impossible, two of its top batsmen, Keaton Jennings and Mark Stoneman, left, causing much resentment.
They were also docked four points in the Natwest T20 Blast and two in the Royal London One-day Cup, while the Riverside Ground was stripped of Test match status, although it could still host one-day and Twenty20 internationals.
For the book, Stuart spoke to Gordon Hollins of the ECB about its decision.
Stuart said: “It was interesting because, over the course of the whole process and with Gordon Hollins for the book, the talk was about precedent, precedent, precedent. They didn’t have anything in the rules to cover
Possibly they overdid it a little bit in bringing in perhaps too many top players. Maybe in hindsight they could have had one or two fewer and still have been able to have the same or similar amounts of success.