Moxon to start work for next season straight away

"We have had some tough years and it's good to have had a successful season," he said amid Saturday's jubilant scenes at Riverside. "But it's important to see this as a start. We still have a lot of work to do.

"Next week we will start putting the final touches to our squad for next season. We have to look at the financial implications and as well as balancing the books we want to keep a balance between our home-produced players and imports."

Although there is a case for strengthening the spin department, Moxon indicated that Durham will not be pursuing former New Zealand Test spinner Paul Wiseman, who recently took ten wickets in a match for the Durham A team.

But he is hopeful that Victoria seamer Mick Lewis will return for a full season as the second overseas player and skipper Mike Hussey should miss only the first two and last two weeks of the season.

Moxon, celebrating promotion in his fourth season with the club, said: "We have had to scrap in the last few games, but someone has always held his hand up.

"We played fantastically well at the start of the season when we won our first four games, but the momentum was hindered by the Twenty20 Cup.

"Some of our young players have come of age and our wicketkeeper, Phil Mustard, has shown his talent. It has been his first full season and he has to learn from it, but I'm confident these lads can perform in the first division.

"Liam Plunkett has done really well to take 50 wickets, Mark Davies did well again until he was injured and Gordon Muchall is developing nicely.

"Gary Scott's contribution in this match has been extremely valuable in the context of the game. He has shown he has mental toughness.

"We had to bring in some experience to get the balance right, but we have still had six local lads in the team and we want to keep that mixture.

"Everybody at the club from the chairman has worked hard for this success."

The match against Northamptonshire was abandoned as a draw when bad light intervened with 29 overs still to be bowled. Durham were 38 for two in their second innings and in little danger of being dismissed by a side showing an extraordinary lack of urgency.

After the positive cricket throughout the Ashes series, it was sadly indicative of the negative tactics often employed in the county championship that Northants treated this as a normal game.

They needed to win and didn't seem to appreciate that Durham needed only a draw as they set a target of 246 in 44 overs.

The visitors quickly agreed to an abandonment following the stoppage for bad light and Durham cracked open the champagne in front of around 200 cheering fans.

Northants didn't have the option of bowling spin at both ends in the fading light as they had left out the highly-promising left-armer Monty Panesar in order to include one of their many Kolpak signings, Charl Pietersen, who bowled the same utter tripe as he did against Durham at Northampton.

After failing by five runs in the morning to enforce the follow-on, Northants had 69 overs left to achieve victory, which should have been their only thought.

The most positive option would have been to forfeit their second innings, but that might have been suicidal so the logical thing was to come out with all guns blazing for a maximum of ten overs.

Instead they batted for 21 overs, initially with little urgency, then got themselves into a pickle when they tried to accelerate, finally declaring at 101 for seven.

At the start of the day Durham still needed 93 to avoid the follow-on when they resumed on 171 for six but it took Northants 45 minutes to make the breakthrough.

Liam Plunkett was on 36 when he pulled Johann Louw for his second six to bring up the 200, but Northants then turned to their recent signing from Lancashire, Australia-born Steven Crook.

From a starting position similar to that of Jonny Wilkinson, he produced surprising pace from a short, scampering run-up and sent Plunkett's middle stump cartwheeling to end the stand of 94.

In his third over he yorked Callum Thorp and when Damien Wright bowled Neil Killeen for a duck Durham still needed 41 with one wicket left.

Australian Brad Williams edged his first ball just to the left of Usman Afzaal at first slip, but it was travelling too fast for the fielder to lay a hand on the ball.

Williams went on to hit four more boundaries, including the one he cracked through extra cover to pass the follow-on target to huge cheers from the fans.

But in the next over Breese clipped Crook off his toes straight to long leg to fall for an excellent 78, his highest score at the Riverside.

With two overs to bat to lunch Northants reached eight without loss. There was no great urgency afterwards, especially from Bilal Shafayat. But Rob White began to go for it in the eighth over, cutting Williams for two fours before miscuing to mid-on.

Rather than going in himself or sending in one of his big-hitters, David Sales stuck to his listed order with rookie Irishman Andrew White going in. He was dropped at slip on nought and scored six off 14 balls before cutting Williams to gully.

That made it 55 for two in the 12th over and two overs later the muddled thinking saw a collapse set in which saw four wickets go down for one run.

Two of them went to Callum Thorp - his first wickets in his fourth championship match - and there were also two for Plunkett, taking his tally to 51.

Four overs were lost to rain with the score on 72 for six, but astonishingly Northants batted on for five overs, gifting Thorp a third wicket.

The visitors' hopes rose briefly when Wright bowled Jimmy Maher round his legs with the sixth ball of Durham's second innings, leaving the Australian with only 18 runs from four championship knocks.

But the only other success came just after the umpires first discussed the light, when Paul Collingwood drove at Louw and was bowled for 22. Gary Scott was left on 12 not out at the close.

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