Chapter Thirty-Six Late Holiday Deal for Durham The county ranks increased to 18 following Durham’s elevation to first-class status in 1992. After a poor start, promotion was vindicated by the opening of the new Riverside ground in 1995 at Chester-le-Street and the winning of two Championships in 2008 and 2009. Durham were Minor Counties champions nine times – seven outright and two joint – between 1900 and 1984, the first minor county to defeat a first-class county (Yorkshire) in the Gillette Cup and established a record of 65 minor county matches without defeat from 1976 and 1982. In their first-ever match they defeated Northumberland at Ashbrooke Cricket Ground, Sunderland in June 1882 and for most of the 110 years prior to first-class status they engaged in a series of two-day holiday tussles with their neighbours. These took place mainly at Ashbrooke or Northumberland’s headquarters at Osborne Avenue, Jesmond, and produced some of the best matches in the Minor Counties Championship from 1901 to 1991. On Whit Monday and Tuesday 1903, Durham’s captain Edgar Elliott made 201, sharing a second wicket partnership of 240 with his brother Henry (104) in a total of 452 for eight declared. Durham won by an innings and 43 runs and there was another notable performance in August 1909 when Alf Morris took nine for 51 at Chester-le-Street’s Ropery Lane, not far from the Riverside complex. The margins were narrow in 1919, when they won by two wickets at Jesmond and three wickets at Ashbrooke and there was another close call for Durham, by five wickets at Jesmond in 1920 when Fred Yielder made 50 for the visitors on Whit Monday. A teacher at Bishop Auckland Grammar School, he never played again because he was not prepared to take time off. Northumberland took revenge at Jesmond over the 1921 Whitsuntide with a nine-wicket victory but Durham achieved a double in their championship year of 1926, when 8,000 attended on Whit Monday and Tuesday. There was more high scoring for Durham at Jesmond in May 1939; 503 for six declared with Alan Parnaby making 162 and Bill Barron, later with Northamptonshire, an undefeated 156. Durham generally had the better of things after the war, dismissing Northumberland for 67 on Whit Tuesday in 1946 at Ashbrooke after no play had been possible on Monday. The former Derbyshire and England all rounder Leslie Townsend top scored with 21 in the Northumberland innings and he enjoyed a measure of revenge at Jesmond in August with 192 out of his side’s total of 340, the match being drawn. Northumberland won at Chester-le-Street in 1948, Durham enjoying some consolation from Whitsuntide receipts of £421, then a club record. In 1956, Northumberland were runners-up and Durham third, Northumberland winning the Whitsun encounter at Jesmond by nine wickets and no result being possible in the Ashbrooke return. Durham were champions in 1976 – but Northumberland completed the double in games restricted to a single innings at Chester-le-Street and helped along by declarations at Jesmond. In keeping with the first-class counties, the holiday tradition tended towards 190