Miserable day for Northamptonshire sees the worst performance yet
They have become used to heavy defeats - losses by an innings have been all to common.
But to lose in less than three days when the entire first day was wiped out by the weather is awful.
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Hide AdDefeat by an innings and 219 runs inside six sessions is incredibly hard for County supporters to take even in a summer of new lows.
Between late morning and mid-afternoon they had been dismissed on two occasions mustering just 83 and 90.
A depressingly bad display in an ever-more miserable summer.
Chris Rushworth was the destroyer.
The Durham bowler ensured Northamptonshire were bowled out twice in a day by claiming the remarkable figures of 9-52 in the first innings and swiftly followed it up 6-43 in the second.
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Hide AdHis match figures - put together in a matter of hours - of 15-95 smashed Durham’s previous best of 14-177 which, slightly ironically, was held by former Northamptonshire man Alan Walker.
For the record, James Middlebrook’s score of 23 in the first knock was the best any County man produced.
That looks all the more appalling considering both Scott Borthwick and Paul Collingwood registered centuries on the same pitch yesterday.
While things take shape for next season off the pitch, there is just one game left to endure on it in this campaign.
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Hide AdThe announcement first thing this morning that Leicestershire captain Josh Cobb has signed a two-year deal with the club offers hope that a renewed approach will offer reward in 2015.
But, on the players’ very long bus trip home tonight, that will probably seem an awfully long way off.