Warwickshire’s ninth-wicket pair sealed an absorbing match that had for large periods proved too close to call, yet the inactive champions, Yorkshire, were arguably the biggest winners.
This result leaves Durham 25 points adrift of their northern rivals in the County Championship title race with Warwickshire, top-two finishers in every competition last season, seven points further back. Both have played a match more and will enter the final two months of the season requiring top-flight rivals to unsaddle a Yorkshire side defeated only three times in their past 59 County Championship fixtures.
Having seen his team edged out by an audacious alliance between Jeetan Patel and Tom Milnes, the Durham head coach, Jon Lewis, denied the title was now beyond his team. “I wouldn’t say that. I would have liked to have been closer than 25, and had we won this game – and we were only two wickets away from doing so – we would be closer. But we still have to play Yorkshire at Scarborough.”
A return to that soporific coastal town next month could provide an invigorating effect – one of those three losses inflicted on Yorkshire was by Durham at that venue on their way to the title two years ago. However, it is highly unlikely they will have Ben Stokes and Mark Wood, two of the chief protagonists from 2013, in their ranks this time, and by then it could be too late.
Warwickshire’s director of cricket, Dougie Brown, acknowledged that when he said: “Yorkshire have played exceptionally well up to now and you would think it is unlikely they are going to slip up from this position. All we can do is keep doing what we need to be doing and keep chipping away and if they slip up then hopefully we can pounce.”
The chip-away method served them well on a pitch that never lost its spite. There were times when it appeared advantage Durham. Most obviously when, to the first ball after lunch on Wednesday, Rikki Clarke was adjudged leg before to Graham Onions. Another 38 runs were required, and numbers nine and 10 were both on nought.
The No9 in question, Patel, was named one of Wisden’s five cricketers of the year in April for his response in these kind of situations. Within six overs the New Zealander had whittled the requirement below 20, doing so with an aerial blow down the ground off Onions. Then, after Milnes flashed another boundary wide of the slips in the same over, he waited for Chris Rushworth to err and clipped another four through midwicket. A similar stroke from Milnes finished things in Onions’s next over.
Earlier, Warwickshire lost the overnight pair Sam Hain and Laurie Evans to catches down the leg side by the wicketkeeper Michael Richardson. Chris Woakes – whose ruthless use of the new ball in the second innings nullified a huge home lead – Tim Ambrose and Clarke then kept progress on course without getting to the finish line.
Paul Collingwood, the Durham captain, has plenty to ponder in the aftermath of this defeat, not least his own future. Collingwood, 39, is contracted until the end of the season and will soon, as he did at this time last year, have to decide whether to stay on or move full-time into coaching.
“There’s no deadline at the moment. He’s aware of the need for a decision to be made because he understands if he stays he will be part of the planning,” said Lewis.
The former England limited-overs captain was also one of nine players charged with code-of-conduct offences on Wednesday. His punishment was a three-point penalty for a level two breach, after lingering at the crease after being given out in the first innings. It comes in a week the England and Wales Cricket Board has written to all 18 counties reminding players of their responsibilities.
