‘You need the players to be able to do what we’ve done’ – Inside Durham’s County Championship resurgence

“The pride of representing the North East is something else,” says Scott Borthwick, as it tips down with rain outside his window. “You can’t actually describe it until you live here I guess, but the overseas players always want to come back. It’s a really special place.”

The strong regional pull at Durham is unlike anywhere else in the country. Tucked away and geographically out of reach to many in the rest of the country, it’s honed and provided a base to many current and past greats. But, since the events of 2016, the county has struggled outside of top-division first-class cricket.

That year strikes a painful chord with Durham loyalists. The penalties imposed by the ECB for being unable to meet their debts were devastating, and objectively harsh. Durham finished fourth that year in the County Championship but were relegated, handed a 48-point penalty for the following season, and given a revised salary cap which stood until 2020. The result was an exodus of players and years in the peripheral wilderness.

Alongside some of their brightest sparks being consumed by England duties, Durham have spent the last six years struggling to consistently finish in the middle of the Division Two table. Last year, their 14 matches produced three wins, finishing sixth in the eight-team league. That stagnation of progress meant that, in 2022, the Riverside was little closer to displaying new silverware than it was in the immediate aftermath of the ECB’s intervention.

But, within a few months of the end last season, everything changed.

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Durham have dominated Division Two of the County Championship this year. With three games to go, they sit 40 points clear at the top of the table, promotion all but sealed by the end of July. And they’ve done it by playing high-pace, high-octane cricket, with bold declarations, skyrocketing run rates, and attacking bowling all features of their campaign.

“At Durham, we try to balance fearlessness vs recklessness,” says head coach Ryan Campbell. “Get that balance right and you can score fast, and we want to score as fast as we can.”

Durham’s new philosophy will, of course, sound familiar to followers of the England men’s Test team. But while it’s not a coincidence Durham’s transformation mirrors that overseen by their own Ben Stokes, it was the arrival of Campbell that ignited their change in fortunes.

Ajaz Patel, Matt Kuhnemann and Matt Parkinson have all been on Durham’s books this season, the club striking the balance between top-rated players with a point to prove, allowing them to keep their chequebooks balanced.

“If there’s an option to go and get a Test spinner, or someone who is a very good as a spinner, that’s always the option to go with,” says Borthwick. “It was the final piece in the jigsaw to what was a very good attack. When you know you’ve got a really good spinner, you can use them in different roles… so it was always the case of trying to get them.”

Against Worcestershire in April, Kuhnemann took a final-innings five-for which secured a tight win. At that point, other specialist spinners on the county circuit were struggling to get regular spots in starting XIs, let alone bowl match-winning spells.

And if that speaks to a lack of depth in the English first-class spin ranks, Durham have moved quickly to secure the services of Leicestershire’s Callum Parkinson, one of the best domestic finger-spinners in the land, for next year’s (almost certain) Division One campaign. This is a long-term project, and Durham are only at the start.

“Every side has to find a way to win games of cricket,” says Campbell. “Within the squad that we have, this is the way we’re going to go about it… Are we perfect? No, we’re far from it. But I think this group of players is well on their way to achieving something special.”