Nottinghamshire slumped to their fifth LV= County Championship defeat of the season as Durham secured the 69 runs they needed to claim their third title in six years.
After heavy rain had wiped out the morning session, play eventually got under way at 1.27pm with the home side needing only a further 62 for victory.
Although Harry Gurney picked up the wickets of Keaton Jennings and Scott Borthwick, nothing was going to stop the Durham charge and after an hour of play they duly completed their eight-wicket triumph.
Mick Newell, Nottinghamshire’s director of cricket, acclaimed the new champions. “We’ve played both Durham and Yorkshire in the last month and had a good hiding off both. They’ve been two excellent sides and I think the fact that Durham have won pretty much all of their home matches has helped them win the championship and in Graham Onions they’ve got the outstanding bowler in county cricket.”
The three day defeat now means that Nottinghamshire’s arrangements ahead of the YB40 final are altered.
“We had a travel plan that has now gone out of the window,” said Newell.
“So now it means we can get down to Lord’s a little earlier and can have a good practice session there on Friday afternoon.”
Once the heavy overnight rain and morning drizzle had cleared, the umpires were happy for play to resume in early afternoon and it seemed that Durham were in no mood to let the victory celebrations be on hold for any longer.
Both Mark Stoneman and Keaton Jennings played an array of fine attacking shots as Chris Read rotated his seam bowlers.
It took 13.5 overs before Notts had a breakthrough to celebrate, with Gurney ripping one into the pads of Keaton Jennings (21), who went neither forward nor back and was given out lbw.
The same bowler pouched another wicket soon afterwards, as Scott Borthwick (0) punched firmly to mid on, where Paul Franks held a fine catch with both arms outstretched.
The winning runs came from the final ball of the 17th over as Stoneman punched Franks away through the offside to a crescendo of noise as the home celebrations began and the champagne corks started to pop.
Whilst the newly-crowned champions were left to celebrate their tenth win of the campaign, the Nottinghamshire party headed off to prepare for their own chance to claim some silverware, in the YB40 final at Lord’s on Saturday.