Up and unbeaten: Durham's summer in Division Two

IMAGO/Sports Press Photo
By Jon
October 30 2026

Durham went up without losing a Championship match all season. Nine wins, five draws, 258 points and 47 clear of Kent, with a One Day Cup semi-final thrown in. Here is how the summer unfolded, and the questions it leaves behind for the winter.

Durham didn't lose a Championship match all summer. Fourteen games, nine wins, five draws, promotion sealed with two rounds still to play. For a side that went down on the final day of 2025, that is about as big a contradiction as you could ask for.

They finished on 258 points, 47 clear of Kent, who went up with them. Hampshire and Leicestershire came the other way.

The day it was done

Promotion arrived at the Riverside on Friday 11 September, Middlesex beaten by 93 runs. Ben McKinney made 184 in that match, and Callum Parkinson and Brydon Carse did the damage with the ball. No final-day arithmetic, no sweating on other scores. Just done, with a fortnight of the season left over.

McKinney and David Bedingham both passed a thousand first-class runs across the campaign, and Matt Potts finished with 60 wickets by the ECB's count. That is the shape of a promotion side in miniature: two batters who kept going, and a seamer who kept turning up.

Stokes came home

Ben Stokes retired from international cricket on 29 June and spent the rest of the summer in a Durham shirt. Seven Championship games, ten in the One Day Cup. Back in July we were wondering whether he would be fit and available for the run-in. He was, and he made it count.

The pick of it was Derby on 21 July, where he hit 108 not out to win the One Day Cup opener. In the Championship he took seven wickets and scored two fifties in the same match against Derbyshire, a game Durham won by 338 runs. For a player who had just stepped away from the international treadmill, he did not look remotely like a man winding down.

So near in the white ball

The One Day Cup almost delivered a second prize. Third in Group B, then Lancashire taken apart at Old Trafford in the quarter-final: 349 for 8, Lancashire all out for 187, a 162-run win.

The semi-final at Radlett was the one that stings. Durham 254 for 7, Middlesex 255 for 8 with eight balls to spare. Two wickets in it, and Middlesex went on to lift the cup. Get that game again and the summer looks different.

The Blast never got going. A three-wicket defeat at Lancashire on 12 July ended it at the group stage, which was scant reward for Alex Lees hitting 73 off 35 at Headingley earlier the same month.

A winter with two big questions

Ryan Campbell is not the head coach any more. On 28 September he moved up to director of cricket and high-performance coaching, taking over from Marcus North, who had left to become an England selector. The head coach job is under review with Campbell running the search, and nobody has been appointed yet.

Then there is Stokes. His England central contract ran out in late September and Campbell is leading the talks about what he does next. Nothing has been settled in public.

Division One cricket returns to Chester-le-Street in April. Durham have earned the right to be there on the strength of a season nobody could argue with. The next few months decide who takes them into it, and with whom.