Durham's scenic ground's elevation to Ashes host

THERE is a sense of wonder about the host venue for the fourth Ashes Test, an air of disorientation.

Durham hosts first Ashes Test

THERE is a sense of wonder about the host venue for the fourth Ashes Test, an air of disorientation.

Never before has Ashes cricket been staged so far north, nor in a market town of barely 25,000 souls where the creation of an arena in a country park seems laced with the magic of Disney. Truly, this is something completely different.

The venue now known as Emirates Durham sparkles in the sunshine, its new seats and concourses pristine beneath the mellow gaze of Lumley Castle. Around the world, I have witnessed many grounds shambolically unprepared on the eve of a Test. This one was so ready for its graduation day that a scrap of litter would have seemed an act of vandalism.

This is not the first Test cricket to be staged here but it is the first of real moment - high summer, in a five-Test series and with Australia as the visiting side. Hotels report being booked out for more than a year and you can almost taste the pride of the locals at their coming of age.

Back in 1991, Mike Gear arrived as chief executive of the only new first-class county club in 70 years to find, as he put it, "one table, no staff, no telephone but unlimited goodwill".

Durham's County Championship career began the following summer, wandering between seven home grounds. In 1995 they moved into Riverside, the farmland in Chester-le-Street that has morphed miraculously into the most scenic Test ground in this and most other countries.

Its virtues include such enviably easy access from the A1 that most of the 15,000 spectators will not see the hinterland of a nondescript town on which cricket has conferred a fresh identity.

Do not be confused by the ground's title, it is eight miles north of the elegant cathedral city of Durham. Chester-le-Street, despite its faintly exotic name, is nobody's idea of a tourist destination.

The latest Living North magazine devotes 80 pages to a gazetteer of the delights of the region but this town is a conspicuous absentee. More starkly, an article on the website Chavtowns says that Chester-le-Street is famous for "pubs, teenage pregnancies, chavs, charity shops, massive unemployment and the highest rate of heart disease in Europe".

A jaundiced view, certainly, but this is no Nirvana. The marketplace was taken over by a test centre for diabetes in the lead-up to the Test and if the pedestrianised Front Street contains no more pawn shops, pound shops and pay-day lenders than many similar towns, it also offers no hint of prosperity.
Those arriving by train can marvel at the 19th-century viaduct but will disembark at a tiny station with no ticket office and descend a hill past squat industrial units and a resource centre promising "recovery and support", which some may require on the way back, to judge from the number of pubs on the mile-long walk to the ground.

What this town lacks in aesthetics, though, it makes up for in pride. Its heritage is broadcast on specially designed Ashes posters, while a plaque outside the library reminds us that things used to be much worse. "Prior to 1939," it reveals, "homeless people would form a queue outside the police station at 6pm waiting to be issued with a permit to spend the night in the workhouse."

Even backpacking Australian supporters grieving over the lost urn need not suffer such indignities. Shopkeepers, indeed, seem sensitive to their predicament. A barbers' shop is advertising a timely sideline for those considering an early departure - "Stressed? Afraid of Flying? Try Hypnotherapy."

Pilgrims among the crowd will stop off in Ropery Lane, where the town's cricket club has stood, opposite the cemetery, for almost 200 years. Chester-le-Street CC is ringed by houses and benches, with a pragmatic brick pavilion and a bar, grandly named the Castle View Lounge, sure to do brisk business this week thanks to a banner at the station advertising opening hours from 9am to midnight.

This was one of the venues for Durham's championship cricket in 1992 and 1993. Just a few hundred yards down the road, Emirates Durham is like another, futuristic world.

Among many north-easterners with a lump in their throats this morning, none has greater cause than Don Robson. The driving force behind the project to bring premier sport to an area that even lacked top-flight football at the time, Robson now has the pavilion named after him.

He accepts, though, that there was a measure of fate amid the heroics. As they cast around for the permanent home on which their future depended, they were turned down by Durham planners, rejected one site as being too close to Yorkshire and another, in a former mining village, because of contamination.

"Then we were approached by a farmer in Chester-le-Street who wanted to stop his lease because it was too wet for him," Robson said. "Whoever is up there was looking after us."

Durham joins the elite this week, an Ashes venue entirely on merit. Certain other counties have virtually bankrupted themselves to stage Test cricket but Durham faced greater financial challenges simply to get started.

It is estimated that this match will generate more than 20 million pound ($38m) for the local economy. Still more important is that intangible goodwill, a nationwide wish that this grand adventure ends well. It was 101 years ago that Durham's first game against an Australian touring team was ruined by rain. They deserve better this week.

The Times