It's A Long Way To The Top (A Durham Story)

[Dark Hunter]

I've decided to challenge myself and try and get Durham to the top of the County Championship at Normal level. Unfortunatley I only thought of doing the story into the 4th year of the game, luckily we haven't really gotten anywhere and are still in the Div2 for both comps. So what i'm going to do is to give quick summaries of the first 3 years and then start off in the 4th year.

1st Year:
Nothing really happened in this year, i skipped everything, we finished last, and the only good thing that happened was Chris Mann averaging 44 in his debut year.

2nd Year:
After the dissapointment of last year i decided to take drastic measures. I dropped everyone except C.Mann and the entire team was filled with youngsters. Captain/Keeper - Nic Pothas undepreformed with only 800-odd runs at an average of about 30. But the highlight of the year was a young off spinner named Jeff Speed. He finished the year with 108 wickets @ 22 (He had a 2nd team average of 15). We Managed to win 5 games and miss out on the promotion by 15 points. Not bad for a team of debutants!

3rd Year:
This Year we managed to finish third last, Despite batting strength of O.Shah, K.Pietersen, L. Sutton and C.Mann + bowling strength of D.Cork, M.Bicknell, W.Younis and J.Speed (who finished with 95 wickets @ 20) not the best year but promising signs.

This Year:
I Will post the first 2 games tonight but the saud for this year follows: (PLayers who you won't know have their stats)

C.Mann
J.Melly (2297 runs @ 36.46)
K.Pietersen
O.Shah
J.Street (879 runs @ 35.16)
S.Barnes (910 runs @ 27.98)
J.Ringham (679 runs @ 24.68)
M.Butcher
B.Lara
L.Sutton
B.Palmer (0 @ 0)
C.White
J.Speed (204 wickets @ 21.54)
D.Cork
J.Carson (0 @ 0)
T.Whitehead (0 @ 0)
G.Chapple
B.Gannon

1st game to be done tonight

 

[Dark Hunter]

Game 1:
24th April
Durham V Yorkshire

Durham 1st Innings: ao/240 - C.White (60), J.Melly (42)
Yorkshire 1st Innings: ao/288 - J.Speed (5/94), G.Chapple (3/83)
Durham 2nd Innings: ao/248 - B.Lara (46), M.Butcher (38), G.Chappell(38)
Yorkshire 2nd Innings:ao/111 - J.Speed (4/21), G.Chappell (5/30)

Match Report:
We won the toss on the first day, looking to score a 350+ total, but good bowling and poor shots resulted in a much lower score than expected. Craig White and Jim Melly the only batsmen who looked comfortable. We went in to field confident that we could restrict to a small lead if they ended up leading at all. Speed took his 19th career 5 wicket haul in an Innings (also the third consecutive year he has opened up his season with a 5/for). We managed to keep the score down and were confident to be able to set a large total. Unfortunatly anoth collapse saw 8/179 only 131 runs in front. But a 66 run partnership between Cork (36*) and Chappell saw us finish with a 200 run lead. With them 1/38 and looking strong all hope seemed lost. Until Speed And Chappell were brought on, and they lost 7/20. A quick 30 run stand lifted their hopes but chappell cleaned up the tail.

Result: Durham by 89 runs
MOM: Jeff Speed