Durham were without all rounder Ben Stokes, and will be for another 6-8 weeks after he suffered joint damage when he dislocated his right index finger in the field on day three of the fixture.
Heading into the final day requiring seven wickets there was no waiting around and the damage was done before the end of the morning session, giving Lancashire little opportunity to turn their innings around.
Ian Blackwell claimed four of the remaining wickets, Graham Onions adding another victim to his overnight tally of two and Mitchell Claydon picking up two scalps from his 15 overs, including Mark Chilton who was the second highest scorer with just 25 runs to his name.
Lancashire were 133-8 at lunch and it required just 4.4 overs of the second session for the final two wickets to fall, handing Durham 24 points for the win, which moves them to the top of the LV= County Championship ahead of the campaign break for the Friends Life t20.
On the Durham LV= County Championship campaign, Head Coach Geoff Cook, said, “The team have played absolutely top class cricket over the last two or three weeks. They’ve enjoyed getting some good scores on the board and we’ve had the variety of bowlers to capitalise on that.
I think the fact we’ve won by an innings in the last few games reflects the variety and quality of the bowlers we have. For the first time ever Durham has played two spinners regularly, we’ve been able to call on Onions and Harmison intermittently and Thorp has been terrific while Plunkett played an important part early on and Brathwaite has come in as a novice to Championship cricket so we’ve had real variety to call on. Everyone has done their bit when they’ve been asked to.
“It’s sad that Ben Stokes’ season has been interrupted the way it has, he’s coming into form with both bat and ball and it’s no coincidence that his batting is improving as his bowling is improving, it’s giving him a real confidence to be able to contribute all-round. I’m sure when he comes back in 6-8 weeks he’ll pick his game up very quickly.
“With regards to the Championship, Lancashire still have a game in hand and on the whole there have been plenty wins in the table, everybody is beating everyone else, there are very few draws so it’s very important that when you do get opportunities to win games you take those and get as many points out of games as you can. We’ve been lucky enough and had the variety of attack to be able to do that. You do have to remember there is still a lot of cricket to be played.”