In the last of our reviews of the 2013 English county season, World Cricket Badger looks at how unfancied Durham upset all expectations to win the LV County Championship title.
In almost a year’s time, Paul Collingwood will reflect back on a long career on the county and international stage and, for all his achievements with England, will regard Durham’s 2013 championship triumph as one of his finest moments in cricket.
Collingwood began last summer in charge of a young, home-grown side knowing they were almost everyone’s favourites to be relegated having already incurred a 2.5 points penalty for breaching salary cap regulations. During the course of an eventful summer, they were given a number of other major obstacles yet cleared them all to claim an incredible championship triumph.
Emirates Durham (AKA The Riverside Ground), home of Durham County Cricket Club, the 2013 LV= County Champions. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Dale Benkenstein, their former captain and influential South African batsman, did not play after May having suffered a serious shoulder problem, while a heart-attack suffered by popular coach Geoff Cook – who was instrumental in bringing many members of the current squad through the ranks – rocked the whole club in mid-summer.
They also lost Collingwood to injury for part of the summer while Graham Onions and all-rounder Ben Stokes received England calls to further disrupt their season, yet somehow overcame a 25.5 points deficit to Yorkshire with four matches remaining to win the title with one to spare. No wonder Collingwood regards this championship as far greater an achievement than Durham’s 2008 and 2009 titles.
“This title meant a lot,” he admitted. “Obviously, being captain and having so many home-grown players in the squad, too, was just great. Every team will tell you that when they are winning there is a great camaraderie, but there was a real cohesion in this team.
“It was remarkable, really. No matter what happened, everything that was thrown at us, we seemed to come out with an answer or a performance. Whether it was Geoff Cook’s illness, losing Graham Onions or Ben Stokes to England, or Dale Benkenstein suffering a shoulder injury, or alarms at the hotel in Nottingham so we only got two hours sleep, we found an answer.
“Every time something happened, I’d think to myself that surely that’s going to stop us, but we kept finding a way to win. There was a long list of things throughout the season that just seemed to gel the team more together, really.”
As Collingwood contemplates his retirement at the end of next summer – he is preparing for the next stage of his life by helping out with coaching Scotland’s national side during the winter months – he will leave an amazing legacy as captain after taking over mid-way through the 2012 season when Phil Mustard chose to step down.
The improvement was immediate with Durham winning 14 of their next 21 matches to avoid relegation in 2012 and then follow that with last summer’s extraordinary title success. They achieved that by leaning heavily on Onions, who was the leading wicket-taker in Division One with a staggering 70 wickets from 12 matches.
They also relied on under-rated performers with Chris Rushworth, born and bred in Sunderland, claiming 54 wickets, Mark Wood claimed 27 victims in only eight matches, young all-rounder Usman Arshad – tempted away from Yorkshire’s age-group teams by Cook after a chance meeting in Dubai – grabbed 16 wickets in five matches while both Scott Borthwick and Mark Stoneman passed over 1,000 runs in the season.
“What pleased me most were the youngsters sticking their hands up all the time,” admitted Collingwood. “A lot of the time you rely on experience to get you through seasons but it seemed to be the other way around – I was happy to get past 30 and the rest of the lads seemed to be do the job.
“We’ve got a very skilful team even though they are young. Whatever wicket we came up against, we seemed to have an answer. We’ve got bowlers with pace, we’ve got a good spin bowler in Scott Borthwick and guys that can reverse the ball. It’s not just the Riverside pitches that we dominated on, we adapted to all different situations.
“The one thing I wanted when I took over the side was that I wanted us to be hard to beat. No matter what situation we were in I wanted us to be hard to beat. That was pretty much my mantra when I took over the job but I could never have imagined it going so well.”
James Buttler
As the editor of World Cricket Badger he is intent on building the website to give quality coverage of the domestic game around the world.
He is also the presenter of the Cricket Badger Radio Show on Radio Yorkshire every Tuesday evening between 7-9pm UK time.
James was the full-time Media Manager at Yorkshire County Cricket Club between 2007 and 2010.
James is a published author, a writer/video contributor to many cricket publications and a complete cricket badger!
Latest posts by James Buttler (see all)
- #UAE15: Bon voyage Derbyshire as Champions Yorkshire land in Abu Dhabi - March 13, 2015
- Sussex sign Mahela Jayawardene for NatWest T20 Blast - March 13, 2015
- #CWC15: Shami books India into World Cup quarter after West Indies win - March 6, 2015
