Five Trophies and a Funeral

Stuart Rayner

Description

Five Trophies and a Funeral: The Building and Rebuilding of Durham County Cricket Club is the story of how English cricket's youngest first-class county quickly became the country's top team, before overstretching themselves financially to the brink of extinction. When Durham joined the professional game in 1992 they aspired to be a major on-field force and a home to top international cricket. The high demands put on them as a condition of entry, together with their own lofty ambitions, pushed the club to five major trophies in seven seasons while providing England with top-quality players reared in the North East. But striving for ever more at a time of economic downturn led them to live beyond their means, and they were heavily punished for overspending that the authorities partly encouraged. Now they are looking to restore past glories under the chairmanship of Sir Ian Botham. Part fairy tale, part cautionary story, Five Trophies explains how Durham arrived where they are, and where they aim to go next.

Sujets

• Condado de Durham
• Críquet
• Durham
• Cricket

Informations

• Publié par: Pitch Publishing Ltd
• Date de parution: 07 mars 2019
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781785315152
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

First published by Pitch Publishing, 2019
Pitch Publishing
A2 Yeoman Gate
Yeoman Way
Durrington
BN13 3QZ
www.pitchpublishing.co.uk
Stuart Rayner, 2019
All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of the Publisher.
A CIP catalogue record is available for this book from the British Library
Print ISBN 978-1-78531-488-9
eBook ISBN 978-1-78531-515-2
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Contents
Foreword by Paul Collingwood
Acknowledgements
Introduction
Upgrading to First Class
Cooking Up a Team
A Good Scriptwriter
Nice Stadium, Shame About the Team
The Production Line
Boon Then Bust?
Outside Influences
Full Steam Ahead
Playing the Numbers Game
We Didn t Want That Journey to End
Unbeatable
Breaking Up Is Hard to Do
Climbing the Mountain
Life s a Breese
Failing the Tests
We Just Can t Keep on Pushing Water Uphill
The Wider Wake
Minus 48
One Step Forward, Two Steps Back
Recreating the Magic
Select Bibliography
In memory of Stephen Drury,
1945-2016
Foreword by Paul Collingwood
I VE played cricket since I was a kid with my brother Peter in the back yard, but I ve only ever had two clubs. Now I ve called time on my professional career after 24 amazing seasons with Durham, the next time I fancy a game I ll be picking up the phone to Shotley Bridge Cricket Club asking if they ll have me!
Once I joined Durham County Cricket Club, I never wanted to leave - why would I? I got the same opportunities I could have had at Surrey, Middlesex or Lancashire. That was thanks to the vision and determination of men like Don Robson, Tom Moffat, Ian and Roy Caller, Mattie Roseberry, Bob Jackson and Geoff Cook to bring top-class professional cricket to a part of the world that had never had it.
Durham have become the blueprint for county cricket and represent everything our region is about. We might have different football teams and accents, but the north east of England is a family that looks after each other, and so is the cricket club that represents it at professional level. While I might have stopped playing for it, I will never leave it. When times allows, you ll see me in the stands at the Riverside, hopefully getting drinks bought for me!
I was approaching my 16th birthday when Durham played their first game of first-class cricket, and it was the perfect storm for me. I couldn t have imagined the brilliant career cricket has given me, playing for my home county and my country. Peter was four years older than me and working by then, so he didn t get the same opportunity.
Durham turning first class highlighted how many skilful players there were in north-east cricket, and you feel for those who missed the boat, like Stuart Wilkinson, a fast bowler I used to play against in the local leagues. Stuart took Geoffrey Boycott s wicket in the 1973 Gillette Cup but, because Durham were still a minor county, he didn t get the chance to test himself against top professionals on a daily basis as I did for 24 summers.
Clearly the club were always going to have to recruit players to set the ball rolling, but the people who set up the first-class club knew they had a blank canvas and had the vision to create something with longevity. They were all about talent identification and giving local lads like me opportunities. They looked beyond the County Durham border, also opening up parts of the country like Northumberland and Cumbria.
More than 20 years after it was set up, Durham s academy is still churning out international players. Add the quality of our coaching system and determination of north-east cricketers, and it s no surprise only Yorkshire, with all their resources, have produced more England Test players this century. It s a great combination that clearly works.
It was always going to take time for everything to bed down and for Durham to settle into the belief that we belonged in a first-class structure that had not changed for 71 years until we came along. My first few seasons were a real struggle, but my team-mates and I were shown the patience we needed to fulfil our potential as individuals and as a club. I ll always be grateful.
We couldn t do it on our own, and people like Dale Benkenstein, Michael Di Venuto and Mike Hussey played very important parts in the story - not just because of their skill but also their attitudes. Others, like Jon Lewis, Alan Walker, Gareth Breese and Callum Thorp, have been adopted into the Durham family, giving great service after their playing days.
While some counties have chased short-term success and others have maybe been happy at times to make up the numbers, Durham have got the balance totally right on the field. In the last couple of years, after our players and supporters were hit by a really harsh punishment for off-field mismanagement, there could have been a real temptation to fill the squad with Kolpak players and county journeymen who could get us back to where we once were much more quickly, but Durham have always looked at the bigger picture.
In doing things the way they set out to from the start, Britain s youngest first-class county has given itself a really strong identity, based on producing players in a relaxed environment and creating tough cricketers proud to represent our region and all it stands for. The longevity of some of our coaches has given everybody an understanding of what the club is about, driving behaviour. That identity kept us strong through the hard times and will bring the many good times also described in this book back.
When I was first starting to pick up a bat and ball, players staying at one club for 23 years was not so unusual, but now it is rare and getting rarer. The world is changing, and with the growth of franchise cricket players get used to different dressing rooms and moving club becomes more and more natural. But, even over the last few years as Durham have been hurt by departures, there were still people like me who wanted to stay, and others, like Ben Raine, Will Smith and Tom Latham, who wanted to come back. That s testament to that culture and identity.
Another part of Durham s identity is ambition, a constant theme of the story you are about to read. If anything, the difficulties the club have been through came from over-ambition, but I d rather that than the other way.
It might take a few years, but I m very confident Durham will get back to winning silverware and setting the standards for English cricket on the field as well as off it. The club is in a position to recruit again, which means it can add the extra ingredients so important to our past success. There is new leadership from a chairman, Sir Ian Botham, and a director of cricket, Marcus North, who played for Durham and know what it is about, plus a chief executive, Tim Bostock, who can bring that outside perspective.
Some clubs have gone over 100 years without winning the County Championship, so for Durham to have done it in 16, and for me to have played a part, was incredible. Our first trophy, beating Hampshire at Lord s in the 2007 Friends Provident Trophy, was a fairy tale. We re not finished, though. No one at the club is content with what we have achieved, remarkable though it is. Right from the day it turned first class, Durham County Cricket Club has always wanted to be the best - not just the best team with the best players, but the best coaches and the best academy. If we didn t have that drive, we wouldn t be Durham.
There are many more chapters and many more trophies to come in this magnificent story. I am just proud to have played my part in getting things started.
Acknowledgements
F IRSTLY, an apology. There are probably a few former Durham players and/or administrators, some big figures in this story, put out that I did not interview them for this book. If you are one, I can only say sorry but easily the biggest challenge was cramming everything in. That so many people were so generous with their time left me with a huge amount of material, so I just tried to get a wide cross-section of experiences.
If you missed the cut, it was not personal. Besides, if you were at the club after 2005 there is every chance I did interview you along the way and even if you are not quoted, you probably helped inform me.
I did speak to David Boon, Tim Bostock, Sir Ian Botham, Gareth Breese, Jeff Brown, Paul Collingwood, Geoff Cook, Steve Coverdale, Andy Fothergill, David Harker, Stephen Harmison, Simon Henig, Gordon Hollins, Bob Jackson, Keaton Jennings, Neil Killeen, Jon Lewis, Chris Middleton, Tom Moffat, Phil Mustard, Marcus North, Graham Onions, Chris Rushworth, Will Smith, Mark Stoneman, James Welch, Dave Whitlock and John Windows specifically for the book, and I hope you enjoy reading their reminiscences as much as I enjoyed hearing them. Particular thanks go to Paul for writing the foreword, to Jeff for allowing me to pore over his old Journal cuttings, to Tom for showing me some valuable documents, and to Dave for also providing photographs of his historic trip to The Parks - I wish I had space to use more. Thanks also to Alison Sutherland for one of her pictures and my employers, NCJ Media, both for allowing me to write this book and to use some of their photos.
A massive thank you to Paul Cunningham and Chris Waugh for not only proofreading the book but in Chris s case acting as an invaluable sounding board too. I am also indebted to Pitch Publishing who, having taken the risk of publishing