IT is the dream a film was made of. A young Durham batsman proudly strides out of the pavilion on his home ground to play for England.

This scene of reverie featured in a video first shown in January 1990, as part of Durham's application to become the 18th first class county.

The young cricketer was 16-year-old Brendan McCreesh, then an up-and-coming star in Durham's schoolboy ranks. He walked out to take guard at the Riverside, then just a piece of Chester-le-Street parkland still without planning permission for a cricket stadium.

For young McCreesh, the dream never came true. He never made it in the first-class game.

But he can be proud of the part he played in one of the greatest sporting success stories of his generation, which reaches its glorious climax today when the Riverside hosts a Test match.

Durham's achievement cannot be over-estimated.

It was on December 6, 1990 that a message was sent from Lord's that Durham had been accepted as the first county to achieve first-class status since Glamorgan in 1921. Today Durham will make history once again.

The Riverside will become the world's newest Test venue, and - after Lord's, the Oval, Trent Bridge, Headingley, Edgbaston, Old Trafford and Sheffield's Bramall Lane - only the eighth ground in the country to stage a Test match.

In the England and Wales Cricket Board's annual report, chairman David Morgan says Durham fully deserves today's celebration.

"We have the busiest ever summer of international cricket in prospect...and for the first time in more than 100 years we are playing Test match cricket at a new ground.

"The second npower Test match represents a massive boost to cricket in the North-East and is testament to Durham's progressive approach. Astute commercial management combined with an uncompromising ambition has been rightly rewarded."

Today Stephen Harmison will benefit from that drive and ambition to become the first Durham player to play in a Test match on his home ground. But Brendan McCreesh beat him to it, and there is a film to prove it/