Skip to content

LV=County Championship: Durham salvage draw against Yorkshire at Headingley

Phil Mustard of Durham
Image: Phil Mustard: Made an unbeaten half-century for Durham to deny Yorkshire victory

Division One champions Durham survived a few nervy moments on the final day at Headingley to bat out a draw with current LV= County Championship leaders Yorkshire.

Starting the day on 59-1 when following on, and still 136 runs behind Yorkshire’s first innings score, Durham showed much more resistance as they eventually made it to 323-8 and secure the draw.

Opener Mark Stoneman made 86, Michael Richardson followed him with 95 and Phil Mustard saw them home to safety with an unbeaten 57 to eventually hang on for the draw.

Jack Brooks talk four wickets and caused continual problems, while Adil Rashid grabbed two wickets – the second of which being Paul Collingwood to leave Durham on 210-5 and looking nervous.  

Latest Cricket Stories

Mustard settled the ship and took enough time and added enough runs to make the draw the only possible result.

“We’re still looking up, we didn’t play our best cricket yesterday but we started the day thinking that as long as we didn’t lose too much ground on the leaders then we’d be OK,” said Durham coach Jon Lewis.

“We’ve done that and not lost too much ground on them with a draw so we’re looking up.”

Another draw

Talk of a thrilling finish at Uxbridge came to nothing as Somerset comfortably batted out for a draw against Middlesex after being set an improbable 390 for victory in two sessions and 20 minutes.

Middlesex, almost certainly mindful of last month's damaging loss to Notts at Trent Bridge following a more generous declaration, gave themselves only 72 overs to try to take 10 wickets but never seriously threatened to succeed on a pitch playing too few tricks.

Somerset, with Nick Compton again defying his former county by adding an unbeaten 83 to his first innings 94, finished on 203-4.

Both teams remain in Division One title contention but a win for either side here would have been like gold dust.

Chris Rogers admitted that last month's defeat by Notts played a part in Thursday's declaration.

"Maybe we could have pulled out a bit earlier but we had a bad loss a few weeks ago and that was in the back of our minds," he said.

"But we are still in the chasing group, we've got Yorkshire next week and if we can beat them we will be right up there. That is a big game for us."

Around Sky