Northern soul: How Durham made it back to the big time

An hour has passed since Durham lifted the Division Two trophy, but Scott Borthwick is still on the outfield at Chester-le-Street.

His team-mates are no longer around him, but he is not alone. David Bedingham's dog - "a beautiful labrador" - is chasing him. After a couple of drops of the shoulder, he finds a moment to stand in one place and look up at the home dressing room.

He sees players and coaches celebrating. Matt Parkinson, on loan from Lancashire, on his way to Kent, has his cap on backwards, beer in one hand, cigar in the other. Director of cricket, Marcus North, is up there too, along with family members, the groundstaff and stewards. Everyone, but him.

"It feels like one club again," Borthwick tells ESPNcricinfo. "It feels how Durham should be. How Durham always was."

Now, for the first time since 2016, they are back in Division One - where they belong.

It was only January, but the players left their first meeting with new head coach Ryan Campbell desperate for the season to begin.

The key message was simple: draws were no good to them. There was a deeper reason for that, far more ingrained into the former Netherlands coach than Bazball or the fact that draws were worth fewer points this summer.

Growing up in Perth under the tutelage of Rod Marsh, Campbell was bred on the fundamentals that a batter's job was to entertain, and doing so would allow the bowlers ample time to take 20 wickets. That, after all, is how you win first-class matches.

It informed how he opened the batting in the Sheffield Shield for Western Australia, notably in a career-best 203 off 222 deliveries against Queensland at the WACA in March 2000. And now, his coaching.

That he was in the northeast owes much to his wife, Leontina, "who never gets involved in cricket". But Campbell was finding it hard to square two offers - Sussex was the other - and turned to her for some rare advice. She asked one simple question: "Who has the best squad?" Despite the two clubs finishing side-by-side near the bottom of Division Two in 2022 (Durham 6th, Sussex 7th), there was a clear answer.

A collection of young players and seasoned pros, plenty with England caps, aligned with a steady stream of talent from their academy - Test match captain Ben Stokes the crown jewel - made Chester-le-Street the destination of choice. A squad capable of embracing Campbell's vision.

Yet, as the season drew nearer, something was missing. Something that had been playing on allrounder Ben Raine's mind enough to discuss privately with Campbell. Fines meetings.

"Fines" are administered for various reasons - the more ridiculous, the better, with the money accrued going into a pot. Cricketers at all levels of the game will be familiar with the practice.

They are a minor yet key tenet of dressing-room culture. Perhaps it is their nature - self-policing, chaotic fun - or the fact everyone is involved in a season-long score-settling exercise where no one is above the ad-hoc laws. They were a regular feature at Durham - until they weren't.

After leaving for Leicestershire in 2013, Raine returned to the club in 2019 to find they had been scrapped. He had offers to go to Essex and Warwickshire, two Division One clubs he greatly admired, but the pull of coming home was too great.

"When I signed back, within the first couple of months, there was a lot of change, which I didn't really know about," Raine says. "New coaches, things like that. It was a very different Durham to what I was expecting, a different Durham to what I had left.

"It was a much more 'professional' look on things - colder, more calculating. It caught us a bit by surprise."

The reason for that shift is linked to 2016's relegation, a punishment for financial mismanagement, requiring the ECB to bail out Durham to the tune of £3.8million along with a 48-point deduction the following season. Chester-le-Street was also stripped of Test status.

Borthwick and Mark Stoneman left for Surrey at the end of that season. Likewise, Keaton Jennings the year after - all three regularly bankers for four-figure runs a season - along with seam bowler Graham Onions (both to Lancashire) while allrounder Paul Coughlin went to Nottinghamshire before returning in 2019. At the end of 2018, director of cricket, Geoff Cook, who had led Durham to three titles between 2008-2013, and his replacement as head coach, Jon Lewis, ended 28- and 22-year spells at the club, respectively.

"Even for me, looking around the dressing room in 2019, it felt a completely different squad to be honest," says Graham Clark, who has been there throughout having debuted in 2015. "A lot of the personnel had changed."

The turnover aligned with increasing desperation to return to the top flight, particularly after Covid-19 narrowed the club's focus. James Franklin was installed as coach in 2019, adopting a more hardline approach which created a divide between the coaches and players. After little progress, Franklin stepped down at the end of the 2022 season.

"For me as a Durham player, I used to go for drinks and dinner with Jon Lewis, who was the coach, or Geoff Cook or Alan Walker," says Borthwick, who returned at the end of 2020.

"The old head coach was 'nah, we're the coaching staff and the players do what they want.' Players started developing fear of the coaches, which should never be the case."

Raine was tentative when he broached the subject of "fines" because of "the old regime". Campbell was taken aback he even asked. All he requested was the coaches be involved, too.

Every training day now begins with a "young vs old" game of football, in itself a boost to morale given football had previously been banned. Yellow cards are £2.50, reds a pricier £10, with Campbell as the referee. "He's been a good earner," says Raine, who is in charge of the kitty which went towards the end-of-season blowout in York over the weekend.

"He reminds me a bit of Ted Lasso when he referees," Borthwick says. "He actually doesn't know the rules, but he laughs his head off throughout."

You could take the Campbell-Lasso comparison a little further. An outsider coming in, putting smiles on faces and, in turn, bringing the soul back to a group of players who had lost the thread of what playing cricket in Durham was all about.

"I think we did lose touch, to be honest," Borthwick says. "Over the last couple of years, we [the players] felt a bit distant from the club and the fans."

This friction can be attributed to the fallout from 2016. Losing talent led to an on-field malaise, which exacerbated the anger among supporters who will never forgive the ECB for their part in all this.

Did it need an outsider to bring the club back together? Borthwick doesn't think so: "It just needed a Campbell. He is an Aussie from Perth, he's lived in Hong Kong, he's lived in Holland. But what he has done is buy into the region."

Quite literally, having bought a house and moved his family over. Campbell's kids are schooled in the area, and members have noted an appreciation of day-to-day life and the overall vibe of what makes the region what it is.

"I talk to Marcus a lot about it, we see a lot of similarities to where we're from" Campbell says. "Western Australia, you're isolated. You feel like you're against the rest of the country. Against everyone.

"I never thought I'd live anywhere other than Western Australia, because I'm very parochial and I love the place. But coming here, there's so many similarities."

At a time when counties as sporting entities seem an antiquated notion, Durham, the youngest having only been granted first-class status for the 1992 season, remain a standard bearer for meaning. There is a broader sense of community even with its internal factions - loosely characterised by their football teams.

"It's a very different way of living from a lot of other places around the UK," says Raine, who is from Sunderland. "I know people take the mick out of us, but people are a lot more friendly, they're a lot more relaxed.

"Life isn't as serious, even with a lot of hardships."

(At the start of 2023, the Office of National Statistics revealed the northeast of England had the highest proportion of households - 54.6%, compared to a nationwide average of 51.7% - deprived in at least one dimension of education, employment, health and housing.)

"When it's time to have fun, it's time to have fun, and I think sport is such a huge vessel for that. It's a release from other aspects of life, and it translates into professional cricket."

Borthwick reiterates that sentiment: "Everything Rainey's said there, it's the nail on the head. We are working-class people. We go to work, we work hard, but we enjoy our time off."

That sense of outsiders sneering at the area prevails within English cricket. Beyond the suspicion of the London-based ECB over its treatment of Durham, compared to the leniency shown Middlesex this year for similar financial irregularities, has been a struggle to recruit from other parts of the country.

"I do think the perception of the region in general has not been good," says Clark, who hails from Whitehaven, Cumbria, more than 100 miles away to the west. "It has been quite a hard place to attract people to come to."

And yet, success this season has been aided by those from beyond the borders. Alex Lees came from Yorkshire and led the run charts with 1347 runs, while many regard the acquisition of wicketkeeper Ollie Robinson from Kent as one of the best signings in the club's history. Lees is a close second.

"It helped that Leesy was a northerner, as it's not that big a move from Yorkshire," Clark says. "But we were lucky we had Ollie Robinson on loan in the T20s in 2022. I think that's what opened his eyes to the place and made him want to sign for us."

Even Parkinson, who had been shut out by Lancashire as he entered the final months of his deal, found a temporary home where he least expected.

"I've played against Matt Parky for years at the Riverside," Raine says, "and he'd always be moaning saying, 'this is a hell hole, how can you lot play here?' Now he can't get enough of it."

Borthwick ensures cap presentations reiterate you do not just represent Durham, but the whole of the northeast. Newcomers are made to feel welcome from the off.

When Netherlands allrounder Bas de Leede arrived in February, he was nervous. He describes himself as "tongue-tied" in his first week, unable to converse with team-mates beyond the usual pleasantries.

One day after training, he was walking into town to get a feel for the place when a shout came from a passing car.

"Ollie Robinson and Ben Raine were driving out," de Leede says. "They saw me so they stopped the car and said 'Basi, hop in'. We went out to have coffee, and then that turned into a long evening with plenty of wonderful conversation around life, cricket.

"They didn't need to do that, but it made me feel so much more welcome. That was really special when I think back."

There are a few ways of unpacking just how emphatic Durham's performances were this season. They topped Division Two by 66 points, winning seven and losing just once.

A line-up full of positive cricketers did as Campbell preached. Their top five run-scorers boasted strike rates over 60 - Bedingham (second) and Robinson (third) going at 77.08 and 88.66 - ensuring they collected 54 out of a possible 70 batting points. In turn, their bowlers managed 39 out of 42 bonus points.

Promotion was confirmed in their round off, with many of the squad oblivious to the fact it was a possibility. Leicestershire's failure to earn any batting points against Sussex meant Durham would finish in the top two. Robinson, who had been checking the score, posted a celebration emoji into the WhatsApp group. Some of the replies queried what it was about.

If that felt like an anti-climax, the penultimate match of the campaign at New Road made up for it. Needing a five-point swing to be certain of top spot, Durham dismissed Worcestershire for 313, earning three bonus points with the ball to the hosts' three spurned with the bat, winning the title with a round to spare.

"That was really cool in the middle of the pitch, everyone coming together," says Raine, who dismissed Dillon Pennington for the title-sealing wicket. "I felt bad for the two opening batters, they had to run off to get padded up when everyone's hugging in the middle. Everyone's over the moon and these two are trying to switch on to go in and bat."

That night's celebrations were understandably raucous, spilling into Bushwackers - a Worcester institution among students and county cricketers. Board members and office staff had also made the trip, with a few too many beers consumed. Durham posted 371 for 4 the following day, a marvel given how some of the top six pulled up that morning.

This, however, does not necessarily feature as a standout highlight. Raine mentions the opening defeat against Sussex, who chased down 231 with just two wickets to spare, as a seminal moment.

"Everyone was disappointed about it, but it seemed to bounce off people," he says. "I could tell looking around the room at Hove that no one was sitting worrying or lacking confidence. It was just disappointment of how we played. Even a loss, when we got back on the bus, I felt we had a different mindset."

Campbell regards this defeat as crucial to the whole project. "We played a very poor 20 to 30 minutes," he says, referring to cluster of wickets at the start of Durham's second innings which meant they only posted 189.

"I pointed that period out to say, you know what, there isn't any other reason we lost than the fact you went into your shells. You became defensive and you stopped backing your abilities to score, and stopped looking to score."

The following week, the season-opener at Chester-le-Street, was another thriller. Chasing victory on the final day, they pulled out of their second innings on 254 for 4 to give Worcestershire 314 to chase in 70 overs. They won with 5.2 overs to spare.

"The question that I ask my players all the time and they get sick of me asking is 'how are we going to win this game of cricket?'" Campbell says. "That morning, I didn't even need to ask. They were all saying, 'we're going to declare, we're declaring now'.

"And that's when I knew I'd got them. Thankfully we won and it drilled home the message. But every player wanted to put the game on the line for us to win. I thought to myself then, 'I think we're going to win this competition'."

That willingness to risk it all is why Borthwick references the one-wicket win over Yorkshire in which Raine finished unbeaten on 50, after vital support from No. 10 Matthew Potts (25), to knock off a target of 246.

"I think that game proved to me that we weren't scared of losing. When you get a dressing room with that mentality, it's so special."

Even when choosing a standout individual, the name that pops up most is not on the podium in either discipline.

Raine - the brains of the bowling attack, according to Campbell - finished with 60 dismissals. Borthwick considers England's clean bill of health over the summer a blessing as it meant Potts could play as many as 11 matches and take 54.

Lees, Bedingham and Robinson churned out international-quality runs. Parkinson, along with Australian Matt Kuhnemann and New Zealand's Ajaz Patel, combined to ensure "the spinning position" returned 45 wickets.

But the player singled out is Clark. His 818 runs, from various situations, was his best return in a season, with three centuries quadrupling his first-class tally.

"I reckon he was the one I took the biggest risk [on]," says Campbell, who wondered why such a clean ball-striker had been pigeonholed as a white-ball batter, restricted to just seven first-class matches in the previous three years. "People were shaking their heads when I said he was going to bat six for us, because I love his aggression."

There was another reason Campbell wanted to push Clark. He noticed he was the glue in the dressing room: "If I could succeed with Graham, because he's so popular - 'Mr Durham' - then the whole team is going to be elated and take to another level.

"I have a beer occasionally and think I'm pretty proud to have given him the opportunity to shine. I think every single person in the northeast is so happy for him."

The sentiment is reiterated by Raine: "I think his [Clark's] success this year has epitomised what we're about. Seeing him doing well lifts everyone around him."

Clark, naturally, dismisses that notion, instead throwing praise on the other batters. "They made my job easy." But he does concede a more positive approach with the bat has seen him flourish.

"I had an idea how a four-day batter should look, and I think I have just stuck with that tradition. I realised you can be a bit more expansive and protect your wicket. The style has suited me, to be super positive.

"And it helps that it feels like a team of friends rather than players pushed together. It's been such a fun environment. I've loved every minute of it."

"It's funny," Borthwick says, still on the outfield but now being shouted at by his team-mates to join them. "When the opportunity came up to go back to Durham, I had a year left on my contract with Surrey. So I said to Alec Stewart [director of cricket], that how he feels about Surrey and Chelsea is how I feel about Durham and Sunderland. There's no place like home."

It's at this point Borthwick starts to get a bit emotional: "I've had a few beers, so I apologise.

"This is my fourth trophy with Durham - two Championship titles, the One-Day Cup and now this. But this feels like the most special one, being captain, getting us back to where we belong. I mean, it's a Division Two trophy but, honestly, there were members in tears."

Many of those members have spent the last couple of months thanking Campbell. He diverts the praise elsewhere: the players deserve all the credit, and North for assembling the squad. He is just grateful to be here.

It is over a year since Campbell suffered a heart attack while on holiday with his family in the UK. He was taken to Royal Stoke University Hospital and spent a week in a coma.

The regular hospital visits and the implantable cardioverter-defibrillator in his chest - "my insurance policy" - are constant reminders of what might have been. The wife and kids get hugged a little longer each day. Even for a man who has always seen coaching as a form of guardianship, those under his care now mean that little bit more to him.

"I'm very humbled to be given a second chance at life but also a second chance at coaching," he says. "This could have all been so different."

Life and sport often run in parallel, but it is hard not to wonder if the presence of Campbell at Durham is a rare perfect intersection. There are strands of the multiverse where only one or neither are around, and yet here they are, key factors in second chances for both.

None of that is lost on Campbell. And thus, there may be no better person to lead Durham back into the top flight. Someone who himself has come back from the brink and has a deep appreciation for what is still to come.

"I wasn't here when things went bad in 2016," he says. "I'm hoping we can put it behind us, and all the Durham faithful can let it be and we look ahead, never look back.

"We want to be winning the first division, we want to be one of the big boys. That's my job - making us one of the biggest clubs in the country. And I'm going to do all I can to put that in place."