Durham started well in the first session adding fluently to the total but lost Will Smith, who was agonizingly close to scoring a thousand runs in the season, lbw to Gareth Andrew for 37.
Michael Di Venuto reached fifty from 80 balls, including eight fours, before he was bowled by Richard Jones on 55 leaving Durham 134-2. Paul Collingwood added 24 before he was caught by the substitute fielder off Kemar Roach in the 46th over.
At lunch Durham, we’re 198-3, Stoneman 46* and Benkenstein 16*.
An unfavourable lbw decision saw Mark Stoneman out to Moeen Ali on 75 reducing Durham to 242-4, which led to Ian Blackwell joining Dale Benkenstein in the middle, both of whom went on to score fifties from 68 and 101 deliveries respectively.
Benkenstein was out lbw to Andrew for 63 just after the tea break with the home side 338-5.
Blackwell became Andrew’s third victim when he was caught in the gully driving at a wide delivery.
Phil Mustard (2) and Scott Borthwick (2) fell in consecutive overs with the captain caught by Mitchell off Richardson and the latter bowled by Andrew.
Durham were 380-9 when Thorp was trapped lbw to Richardson for 7 and the home side posted a second innings total of 388 once Graham Onions took the same bowlers tally to four in the innings.
Elsewhere, Warwickshire claimed their final available bowling bonus point which determined that Durham could no longer win this season’s LV= County Championship.
Worcester added fifty in their second innings before Onions bowled Daryl Mitchell for 35 in the 7th over. The seamer struck again in his following over taking his championship haul for the season to fifty, with Vikram Solanki, caught behind without scoring.
Worcester, having secured their division one status, were 65-2 at the close.
After play durhamccc.co.uk spoke to Dale Benkenstein, “It’s been nice to come back and have a good season after last year, last year was disappointing for me and for the team so it has been an enjoyable season and I’ve contributed the way I like to contribute.
“”The wicket has always got something in it, you never really feel like you’re in and coming into day four there is a little bit of uneven bounce so that’s nice for us and hopefully our spinners will get more out of it aswell. We just want to finish well, we feel like we’ve had a really good season, it’s disappointing that we were in the position we were in going into this last game because about a month ago we really thought we were in with a chance of winning it.
“To be able to win a title over six months it relies on consistency of form over those six months and I don’t necessarily think that you’re the best team as results show, we’ve beaten Lancashire and Warwickshire twice, but over the six months there were periods where we did ourselves down and that cost us when it comes down to one or two points at the end.”