He slammed his brakes on. Turned in wonderment, pointed and said: “Virender Sehwag is here?” He sat staring at the walls of the stadium in silence. And for a moment he was back home in India. I am sure I could see a tear in his eye as well.
In the spring of 2010 Durham created cricketing history. They staged the first match in First Class cricket to be played under floodlights and with a pink ball. As champions they had the honour to meet MCC at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi.
It was the start of a tie-up between MCC and Abu Dhabi which would last five years and it meant The Champion County Match, which had been the opening fixture of the season since the 1960s, could be played in the heat with little risk of rain.
Back then the stadium was out in the desert, miles from the city centre. And other than a couple of wickets rolled into the sand for ex-pat Pakistani and Indian workers to play on adjacent to the ground, there was nothing else there. From the commentary position high up in the main stand you could just make out the Eagle-shaped club house of the golf club a few miles away.
They like their strange shapes in the UAE. The main stand at the stadium looks like the spaceship in Star Trek as you approach it. A closer look reveals it’s actually shaped to be a ball and three stumps. There’s another building on the motorway which is basically a huge circle. It looks like a giant plate standing on its edge. I believe it is an airline office.
And on Yas Island, the home of the racing circuit, Ferrari World is the shape of a huge sports car, while the main hotel is wrapped in more than 5,000 glass plates which change colour constantly. I can’t really work out what it’s meant to look like. Waves? A whale? I have no idea, but it is incredible.
These things were built in the days when money was no object and around a third of the world’s high cranes were on building sites in The UAE. When the Dubai Creek Golf Club was built in the mid-90s there was a rumour all of the windows in a building on the other side of the motorway had to be changed because they reflected too much light and put the players off.
Durham won their first game in Abu Dhabi by 311 runs in 2010. By the time they returned in 2014 the stadium wasn’t in the middle of nowhere anymore. A lovely nursery ground had been built next to it. The two fields were separated by the pavilion which sat in the middle of the ground.
And the city was edging ever closer with housing developments. From my commentary position on the fifth floor it was 175 metres to the centre of the wicket. It made for really difficult viewing at dusk as the floodlights tried to take over from the fading light and the players tried to keep their eye on a grubby pink ball. Wickets always fell at this point.
The match was an easy win for MCC in 2014. Their side featured Virender Sehwag and Prasanna Jayawardena, among others. Sehwag made 109 in their second innings and chasing 224, his MCC side won by six wickets.
I travelled on the MCC bus most days to and from the ground. But one night I had to get a taxi. The driver was an Indian man and asked what I had been doing at the ground? As he started to drive away I explained I had been watching a match featuring Virender Sehwag.
He slammed his brakes on. Turned in wonderment and said: “Virender Sehwag is here?” He sat staring at the walls of the stadium in silence. And for a moment he was back home in India. I am sure I could see a tear in his eye as well.
While the stadium is lovely the matches in Abu Dhabi rarely attracted an audience. I think about 30 Durham fans flew out to the first one. I can’t remember seeing any at the second.
The Pakistani and Indian workers who provide much of the workforce in The UAE are too busy working to come and watch the cricket. And when they do have an afternoon free they play their own games on wickets oiled into the sand which are dotted around the ground. Yet most would be unaware of the stars playing just over the wall a few yards away.
THE SLOW START
After the game in Abu Dhabi my family joined me for a holiday in Dubai and we had an apartment overlooking the vast marina and The Persian Gulf with its beautiful blue waters. A few days later I was looking out of my hotel room at the roof of Northampton Bus Station.
After the joys of 2013 and the season of surprises, Durham found the going tough in 2014 and struggled in the County Championship to get a win on the board. For a while it looked like they would join the growing list of champions who got relegated the following year.
The opening championship match was disappointing from a Durham perspective as hosts Northants held on at Wantage Road with the last pair at the crease. For Durham it felt like a defeat but for the hosts, who had just come up from Division Two, it was like a win. They went straight back down though -without a single victory.
Matches against Somerset, Yorkshire and Sussex ended in draws. And in the T20 Durham lost half of their games and finished in mid-table. The Royal London Cup came later in the season and offered a chance of some respite. But the fixtures were cruel initially and Durham lost three of their first four.
Anyone with common sense would have paired their away games to make them more manageable. Maybe go to Kent and then Sussex, because they are not that far apart? And perhaps pair Taunton and Cardiff? No chance! I worry about the carbon footprint the sport creates some summers.
Durham started in Taunton and then went to Canterbury. They lost both. They came home and beat Warwickshire at South Gosforth, then had to go to Hove. They lost. By the time they arrived in Cardiff and were bowled out on a poor pitch for just 185 things did not look good.
But Graham Onions took a treble wicket maiden in his third over and Glamorgan were all out for just 133. Durham defended what turned out to be their lowest total of the competition that year. Glamorgan were docked two points for the next season. They weren’t in Durham’s group though!
The abandonment of a match against Middlesex in Chester-le-Street left things in the balance, but they managed to win their final two group games against Notts and Surrey to give themselves a chance of qualification. However, they finished their fixtures before the rest of the group. It was to be a waiting game.
THE ROAD TO NOWHERE
The final group game in the Royal London Cup in 2014 was against Surrey in Chester-le-Street. Durham won with nine balls to spare but the game finished late because of rain and the players had to be in Manchester that night because they had an important relegation battle beginning in the championship the following morning.
I normally drive to the games, but on this occasion decided to be a passenger. I regularly travelled with Stu Rayner in those days. He covered Durham games for The Chronicle and The Journal. And this time he said he would drive.
We didn’t set off from Chester-le-Street until about 8pm and we were hungry. So, we pulled into Durham Services for a bite to eat. While we were in there workmen turned up outside and closed the road back to the motorway. We were sent on a long de-tour through the villages of County Durham.
By the time we got to the M62 just south of Leeds we hit a huge traffic jam. They had closed that motorway for repairs as well. And so it went on. The journey took forever and we didn’t reach the hotel until the early hours. The team bus was somewhere behind us.
Lancashire had won the County Championship on the final day of the 2011 season but were relegated the following year. They came straight back up but towards the end of the 2014 season they were in a relegation tussle with the likes of Durham. And with Northants cut off at the bottom there was only one place left to try and avoid.
On a windy morning Durham batted and reached 50-0. Things were going well. At lunch they were 89-5 and in a spot of bother. Ben Stokes had been released by England and was heading up to Manchester to join his team-mates. But would he get there in time? A seventh wicket partnership of 145 from Calum MacLeod and John Hastings took Durham to 290-7 and into a second day. They were eventually out for 340.
But the opening stand from Paul Horton and Luis Reece was worth 138. (Reece had played for MCC against Durham in Abu Dhabi a few months earlier.) Horton went on to make 114, while Ashwell Prince put on 106, but took six hours doing it. Lancashire ended up 81 runs ahead.
Scott Borthwick bowled 294 balls as he took 2-158. It was the largest spell of bowling by a Durham player since Nicky Phillips did a similar thing at Yorkshire in 1998. But his team needed it because illness was sweeping through the ranks by this point and Durham were down on numbers.
The third day saw five rain interruptions and Durham couldn’t settle with the bat in a howling Manchester gale. They were all out for 187 and that meant Lancashire needed only 107 to win and move out of the relegation zone at Durham’s expense. The final day was a nerve-shredder as the hosts collapsed, then recovered, then collapsed again.
They were 90-9 before Tom Smith got them home. He made 35*. The win came with two balls to spare. And Durham were in a fix. After the game we waited upstairs in the press room for a post-match interview but later discovered the team bus had already left without anyone coming to see us. It was simply a mix-up but was the only time I hadn’t got a post-match interview in all the years I’d covered Durham. A pity after such a tight game which had so much riding on it.
By the time we got away from Old Trafford I was filled with a sense of gloom. Durham could be on their way to Division Two just a year after the highs of winning that title in 2013. On arrival back at Chester-le-Street I was stunned to see the stadium padlocked and silent. My car was in there and I was due to go away on a family holiday the next morning – in it. It just summed up the trip to Manchester perfectly. Stu had to drive me home to Roker instead.
The days that followed were a bit of a blur. Although I will never forget the news we were expecting our third child. I knew it would be another daughter. And it was. I am outnumbered these days. Something I share with Paul Collingwood.
I was in The Lakes with the family as the other sides in the Royal London Cup finished their group games. There were 10 days between that match at Old Trafford and any possible quarter final in the cup.
But everything had to happen in a particular order for Durham to get through. From a purely personal point of view I was hoping they could somehow finish fourth and end up with a trip to Headingley, instead of a long journey elsewhere. And everything clicked into place nicely as I watched from afar.
Nottinghamshire had a last ball win over Warwickshire which elevated them up the table to top spot. A weird floodlight failure at Surrey meant Somerset were beaten under the D/L when it looked like they would win. And Yorkshire won the other group with a victory at Hampshire. It all meant Durham only had a short trip down the A1 instead of a trek to Chelmsford or Bristol.
As we began our commentary on a sunny morning at Headingley we could hear a siren in the distance. The atmos mic from the commentary box picked it up. “I hope it’s not coming here Marty,” said my co-commentator Dave Callaghan. Then the siren disappeared and we were back to concentrating on the game. Durham were batting with Mark Stoneman and Phil Mustard out in the middle. Then suddenly they weren’t. They were walking off. Followed by Yorkshire.
Sadly the ambulance had been heading to the stadium. A Yorkshire supporter of many years had taken poorly in the stands. Unfortunately we would later learn he had died.
When the match resumed Stoneman was able to put the issue behind him and concentrate on the matter in hand. His opening stand with Mustard was worth 57 and he went on to make 102 of Durham’s 237 all out.
A mate who was in the stands that day said a man sitting behind him wrote every Durham player off as they walked out to the middle. “I’ve seen this lad before. He can’t bat. Oh, this one won’t last long. We’ve got this one now.” Durham won by 31 runs.
Having covered Durham for 21 seasons I have built up some great friendships among the commentators. I think everybody enjoyed working with the late Dave Callaghan. He was a super bloke. There are a few you really look forward to working with and I have built a close friendship with BBC Radio Nottingham’s Dave Bracegirdle over the years as well. Listeners refer to us as Stadler and Walford from The Muppets.
I have stayed with Dave and his partner Karen in Newark and was at his 60th a couple of years ago. I still have the picture on my phone of me, Brace, and the Notts pair, big Luke Fletcher and Steven Mullaney. Me and Brace were on commentary when Alex Hales smashed Ryan Pringle through the window of our commentary box at Trent Bridge. And Brace is still receiving treatment after witnessing what Ben Stokes did to Notts in the semi-final of 2014.
If it’s mentioned he has to lie down in a darkened room for half an hour and sing nursery rhymes. And to this day he continues to argue it was unjust for England to allow Stokes to play for Durham, while Notts were told they could not field Stuart Broad. They still had Michael Lumb, Steven Mullaney, James Taylor, Samit Patel, James Franklin, Chris Read and Ajmal Shahzad in their ranks. But hey, that’s just details.
Durham batted and made 353-8. It was their highest one-day score and Stokes got a lucky 164. But sometimes these things happen. It is Durham’s highest individual one day score and it included six maximums and 16 fours. In the run up to the semi-final Durham had also beaten Notts by 54 runs in the County Championship as signs of a late revival started to appear.
Stokes and Phil Mustard put on 135 for the fourth wicket before Mustard was run out for 89. And this was after Notts put Durham in on a dark morning expecting wickets. Cricket, eh? James Taylor made 114 for the visitors, who were also the holders of the cup at the time. But they were all out for 270 and lost by 83 runs. Durham were in a Lord’s final for the first time in seven years.