Well, it is all over for another season, and Durham have sealed a magnificent come-from-behind win, moving up from 3rd place to 1st in the table in the final series of games.

Kent didn’t put up much of a fight this morning, so things were pretty much all over by lunch time. Kent are relegated, and the Durham boys settled in with a few beers to see what happened to Nottinghamshire.

Hampshire were in no mood to make things easy for Notts. They carried on batting until young Liam Dawson got to his maiden first class century. At 18 he’s the youngest Hampshire player ever to achieve that feat. The lad bowls too – he was responsible for removing Samit Patel for 77, after which the Notts innings crumbled.

The win took Hampshire up to 3rd, leapfrogging Somerset who surrendered tamely at Taunton. Lancashire fans will be much relieved to see their team finish the season with two away wins, because they had looked in deep trouble.

With Kent already relegated the game between Sussex and Yorkshire ceased to have any meaning, and as Sussex had been fighting a strong rearguard action the game ended in a draw.

The BBC has a long piece on the Durham success story here. It is quite an achievement for an expansion team to win such an ancient tournament only 16 years after gaining admission. My favorite part of the article (other that the rather cute picture of a very young Paul Collingwood) is the bit about getting sponsorship deals for the new club:

“One guy that deserves a lot of credit is Kevin Keegan,” explained Wright. “He was one of the first people to ring in and say ‘if I can help give me a shout’ and I can remember vividly a few times when I was close to negotiating a sponsorship deal I asked if I could bring along a colleague, and the colleague was Kevin. When he walked in the contract was signed immediately.

I’ll bet it was.