No other modern player has the knowledge of Ryan Sidebottom when it comes to winning the County Championship pennant and so it was fitting that the Yorkshire fast bowling veteran was the final-day catalyst for a victory that enhanced his chances of making it a personal half-dozen.
This result, allied to leaders Middlesex’s condemning of Nottinghamshire to relegation with victory at Trent Bridge 10 minutes later, means this year’s Division One title race will go down to the wire and almost certainly involve a winner-takes-all, final-round showdown between the current top two at Lord’s.
Somerset are still in with a mathematical chance of spoiling things but would have to orchestrate it via a remarkable sequence of results, including a heavy win at Headingley next week, where Yorkshire are now unbeaten in 22 matches. Their 13th victory in that sequence was a probability when play resumed and a near-certainty midway through the first spell of Sidebottom – a champion three times with his home county and twice with Notts – from the Football Stand end.
The left-armer’s burst of three for six in 18 balls plunged Durham to 63 for six. It was only a matter of time from then on; that time was 2.15pm when his new-ball partner, Jack Brooks’, yorker left just one of Chris Rushworth’s stumps standing.
“As much as you don’t want to look at other results, next week they’ll be looking at our scores, we’ll be looking at theirs, and it will boil down to who plays the best cricket,” said Sidebottom. “We know how to win it. I suppose the pressure is on Middlesex. They have not won it for a long time.”
Twenty-three years to be exact. In contrast, Yorkshire are going for a third in a row, to emulate the county’s stellar side of the Sixties, and provide the perfect send-off for their Australian coach Jason Gillespie.
Age has not moderated Sidebottom, whose on-field mannerisms – the grousing, the stomp, the flicks at the tangle of hair – remain prevalent and belie his mild-mannered nature off it. Pleasingly, he still celebrates wickets, albeit not quite with the hysteria of Brooks, and was doing so when Graham Onions’ miscued drive gifted a catch to cover. Then, his ability to outfox batsmen through the air won lbw shouts against Scott Borthwick and Paul Collingwood.
Resilience, one of Durham’s trademark qualities, was evident during an hour-long alliance between Graham Clark and Michael Richardson but the former fenced fatally at Tim Bresnan before lunch, as did Barry McCarthy after it. In between those tail-end dismissals, Sidebottom completed season-best figures of four for 34 by having Richardson held at first slip.
Dressing room tomfoolery – he fractured a fibula playing football – has restricted the former England international to just seven matches this season. The flipside is that the man his Yorkshire colleagues call the Rolls Royce is in shape to be wheeled out again next Monday against Somerset.
The England one-day players Liam Plunkett, David Willey and Adil Rashid are available too, although only the latter is guaranteed to play. Steven Patterson, who left this match temporarily to visit his father in intensive care, is expected to keep his place in the bowling attack.
“All we can do is keep winning our games,” said the Yorkshire captain, Andrew Gale. I don’t see us choking. The biggest lesson we have had is in 2013 when we tried too hard to win it and slipped up. Middlesex might be in that position. When the end goal’s in sight you tend to go a bit harder at it, and can come unstuck.”.
Durham, who pipped Yorkshire three years ago, were “taught a lesson on how to go about four-day cricket,” according to Gale’s opposite number Collingwood. Still not safe, six points above the drop zone, they have fixtures against Surrey at home and Hampshire away, to come. So Ben Stokes’ availability for both, and that of Mark Wood for at least one, is welcome.
“We need a bit of a spark to get us all going. It’s been a long, hard season but we have a lot to fight for still. This match showed why we are in the relegation battle, and we will have to make sure over the last eight days of cricket this season we are right on the ball,” said Collingwood.
If Yorkshire are, then it will almost inevitably result in Siddy’s sixth.
