County Championship: Division Two champions Durham end with Lancashire draw

Rothesay County Championship, Division Two, Old Trafford (day four)

Durham 493: Gay 141; Ali 6-166

Lancashire 397-6: Bohannon 190*; Parkinson 4-92

Lancashire (11 pts) drew with Durham (13 pts)

Match scorecard

Josh Bohannon made an unbeaten 190 to ensure Lancashire ended a disappointing County Championship campaign with a draw against Durham on a rain-affected last day of the first-class season at Emirates Old Trafford.

Resuming on 267-5, the home side had progressed to 397-6 in the 38 overs that could be fitted in between spells of poor light and rain.

Lancashire’s total was largely the work of Bohannon, whose runs in this innings represent more than a third of his aggregate for the season.

The cricket played on this final day did not affect the teams’ league positions.

Unbeaten Durham took 13 points from the game and have won the division by 47 points from Kent, a margin which reflects their superiority this season.

Lancashire, by contrast, end the season next to bottom on 114 points, 17 ahead of Gloucestershire but 36 shy of sixth-placed Derbyshire.

Bad light and slight drizzle meant that play began 45 minutes late on the final morning of the season, and only 6.1 overs were possible in the first session before the gloom returned and an early lunch was taken at 12:15 BST with Lancashire on 295-5.

However, the rain stayed away long enough to allow nearly two hours’ play during the afternoon session in which the home side scored 102 runs for the loss of Ben Walkden.

Bohannon reached 150 for the seventh time in his Lancashire career off 321 balls but he lost his batting partner Walkden for a career-best 36 when the all-rounder attempted to pull Callum Parkinson to leg but sent a catch to Brydon Carse at backward point.

By that stage, however, Walkden’s sixth-wicket partnership with Bohannon had yielded 83 runs and taken Lancashire to within 14 runs of avoiding the follow-on.

That landmark was reached by George Balderson’s unbroken 66-run stand with Bohannon, during which the cricket acquired the gentle aimlessness often associated with end-of-season games when little is at stake.

The umpires came off for bad light at 14:35 and an early tea was taken at 14:50. However, the murk continued and a draw was quickly agreed at 15:45.

ECB Reporters’ Network supported by Rothesay.

Durham head coach Ryan Campbell:

“I reckon these four days have dragged on a bit, to be honest. You want to finish the season on a high, of course, but I don’t think the surface has helped out at all.

“It’s a road, basically, but the lads kept trucking in and how it’s resolved is not that important to be fair. We’ve worked so hard and we got the league done up with two games to go.

“Overall, we sit here ecstatic at how we played. It’s easy to forget how hard our off-season was and what we went through last October. But when I look back, I’m so proud of how the club reacted.

“The lads came in and worked their butts off and overall, it’s been a pretty impressive year.

Lancashire all-rounder George Balderson, Lancashire all-rounder:

“We spoke about using this game as the first one of next year and get out of it what we can. It was sort of an old-school, Old Trafford pitch. It was fairly nice to bat on and fairly slow.

“We were all buzzing for Josh to get that time in the middle and get a big score because he’s been working so hard over the last six months.

“It’s been a really, really poor season from pretty much all of us in the team.

“We’ve got to, as individuals, become better cricketers and then come together at the start of April and start putting some performances together, which is what the members deserve and what we know we’re capable of doing.”