County DIV2 2026, LAN vs DUR 56th Match Match Report, September 24

Lancashire 267 for 5 (Bohannon 190*, Parkinson 4-92) drew with Durham 493 (Gay 141, Noman 6-166)

Lancashire ended a disappointing Rothesay County Championship campaign with a draw against Durham on a rain-affected last day of the first-class season at Emirates Old Trafford. Shortly after the conclusion, the club announced that incoming chief executive Richard Kenyon will lead a review of their cricket operation and performance structure after they finished next to bottom of Division Two on 114 points, 17 ahead of Gloucestershire but 36 shy of sixth-placed Derbyshire.

Kenyon officially takes his post on October 5, joining from Nottinghamshire, where he served as chief executive officer, and will replace the incumbent Daniel Gidney, who is retiring. Gidney set a restructure in motion last week when sacking director of cricket performance Mark Chilton, along with director of women’s cricket David Thorley. The club’s board, including John Abrahams, Mike Watkinson and Sir Clive Lloyd, will support Kenyon in his review.

Lancashire resumed the final day of this match on 267 for 5, and progressed to 397 for 6 in the 38 overs that could be fitted in between spells of poor light and rain. Their total was largely the work of Josh Bohannon, who made an unbeaten 190. Those runs in this innings represent over a third of his aggregate for the season.

The cricket played on this final day did not affect the teams’ league positions in the slightest. 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. The surprise is not that Alex Lees’s team won the Division Two title; the surprise is that they were in domestic cricket’s second tier in the first place.

Bad light and slight drizzle meant that play began 45 minutes late on the final morning of the season at Emirates Old Trafford. And only 6.1 overs were possible in the first session before the gloom returned and an early lunch was taken at 12.15 with Lancashire on 295 for 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’s wicket. Bohannon reached 150 for the seventh time in his Lancashire career off 321 balls but he lost his batting partner, Ben Walkden, for a career-best 36 when the Newton-le-Willows all-rounder attempted to pull
Callum Parkinson to leg but only skyed 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 nothing, not even a point, is at stake.

The umpires came off for bad light at 2.35 and an early tea was taken at 2.50. However, the murk continued and a draw was quickly agreed at 3.45.

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