Warwickshire 198 (Hain 57, Rushworth 5-43) and 265 for 8 (Evans 70, Onions 3-79) beat Durham 314 (Stoneman 112, Borthwick 67, Clarke 5-62) and 148 (Harrison 53, Clarke 3-19) by two wickets
Scorecard
Durham had lost only two home matches in three years before Yorkshire won by an innings at the Riverside last month. Now they have lost two in a row and Yorkshire are the clear beneficiaries, the gap between themselves and Durham still a yawning 25 points. Middlesex are closer, 11 points in front of Durham in second place, but they have played two matches more than Yorkshire, who also have a game in hand on Durham.
Jon Lewis, the Durham head coach, is not yet ready to concede defeat, particularly with a trip to Scarborough to face the leaders still to come. Yet Dougie Brown, Warwickshire's director of cricket, believes the title is Yorkshire's to lose and having played the two rivals back to back he is as well placed as anyone to judge.
"They are the ones looking behind them," he said. "They have played exceptionally well up to now and you would think it is unlikely they are going to slip up from this position. They are a strong side, and even when they don't have their international stars they are a very good squad. They have some young players who have stepped up to the plate and they are playing really good team cricket."
Warwickshire were beaten by 174 runs by Yorkshire last week but came out best in a nail-biting finish here, when enough batsmen showed enough composure in conditions that were still giving the bowlers an advantage to reach a challenging target of 265 with two wickets to spare. Brown admitted that his nerves were frayed watching from the players' balcony but out in the middle, along with one innings of substance, from Laurie Evans, there was a supporting cast long enough to supply six partnerships in the innings of between 20 and 38 runs and, therefore, few moments of real panic. It meant that while wickets kept falling, the scoreboard kept ticking over. The Durham bowlers did not manage to produce back to back maidens at any stage of the innings, which was telling.
After Warwickshire had begun the final day with seven wickets in hand and 140 more to score, Graham Onions struck an early blow for the home side when a short ball took the glove of Sam Hain to give Michael Richardson the second of three catches taken down the legside. Evans became the next, Richardson moving sharply to snare the ball as the right-hander, on 70, glanced a ball from Chris Rushworth, at which point the total was still 107 short of the target and Durham were beginning to sense that the balance was tipping their way. But Tim Ambrose, Rikki Clarke and Chris Woakes all batted with purpose.
Ambrose fell to a fine catch by Paul Collingwood, standing wide as the only slip, as a swinging ball from Jamie Harrison induced an uncertain jab from the batsman. Woakes fell just before lunch, leg before to a ball from Rushworth that gave the Durham seamer his 250th first-class wicket. Seven down, but with only 38 needed, Warwickshire were by then looking strong favourites.
Clarke's dismissal to the first ball of the afternoon might have prompted panic, particularly after the batsman departed with a clear sense of injustice, smacking the face of his bat with his glove, while looking daggers in the direction of umpire David Millns, who had upheld an Onions appeal for leg before.
In Jeetan Patel and Tom Milnes, the ninth wicket pair were at opposite ends of the experience scale. But Patel, while not exactly curbing his natural tendency to swing the bat, stayed sensible, the odd streaky moment more than balanced by some controlled and relatively risk averse aggression that kept the pressure from building. Milnes showed some composure too and it was his second boundary, clipped through midwicket off Onions, that finished the job.
Having led by 116 on first innings, Durham can be said to have squandered a good position in the match, but that would be to downplay the quality of Warwickshire's bowling during the critical phase of the match, which reduced Durham 55 for 7 at the start of their second innings, having at one point been 9 for 4, the period of the game which showed Chris Woakes, even in his first competitive action for four months, to be near his best with the ball.
"At that point it was going to be a long way back into the game for us and we knew the only way we could get back was to have a magic third innings," Brown said. "We got it right straight away, putting pressure on from both ends and we had that magic half an hour or 40 minutes where they managed to nick everything and we took our catches. That spell from Chris along with Rikki Clarke was as good as we have seen from anybody all season."
Brown may feel Yorkshire now hold all the aces and Lewis probably agrees. He conceded that by losing to all of their closest rivals - Middlesex at Lord's, Yorkshire here and to Warwickshire away and now at home - Durham have not made life easy for themselves but does not believe the race is over.
"I wouldn't say the title is out of reach," he said. "I would have liked to have been closer than 25 points, and had we won this game - and we were only two wickets away from doing so - we would be closer. But we still have to play Yorkshire at Scarborough and that was a crucial game in 2013."
