The Northern Echo’s Tim Wellock was the only North-East cricket writer in Kent to see Durham, a minor county only 17 years ago, reach the pinnacle of county cricket.

IT has taken less than 20 years for the dreams of a handful of influential Durham cricket fans to be realised beyond their wildest imaginations.

Test match status was awarded to the Riverside ground at Chester-le-Street in 2003, the team won the Friends Provident Trophy at Lord’s last year, and on Saturday they became county champions.

Two of those original dreamers, Bob Jackson and Tom Moffat, are still directors of the club, and at Canterbury last week Moffat said: “I never thought I’d live to see Test match status awarded, and I certainly never thought I’d live to see this. It’s a great thrill.”

It was in 1989 that Moffat, who ran a publishing company in Birtley, near Chester-le-Street, helped produce a promotional video to attract sponsorship in the bid for First-Class status.

It featured footage of a Newton Aycliffe boy walking out to bat on what was then an open space used mainly for dog-walking, and the voice of Tom Graveney speculated that one day a Durham boy would walk out to bat for England on that same piece of ground.

He has since said that he never for one moment believed it would happen, but Paul Collingwood, Steve Harmison and Liam Plunkett have all played for England at Riverside.

Graveney, born in Riding Mill, near Hexham, was chosen as one of the few cricketers born in the North- East to have played for England, and his nephew, David, was Durham’s original First-Class captain in 1992.

Hundreds of people signed a petition opposing the creation of the Riverside ground, and they even enlisted the support of David Bellamy, arguing that several species of flora and fauna would be endangered.

There are no complaints now that the ground has achieved international recognition and the team has brought glory to the region.

Among those who originally drove the dream forward was Ian Caller, whose company had organised the annual Callers Pegasus cricket festival at Jesmond, featuring many of the world’s top players.

Then there was former president Arthur Austin and Sunderland businessman Matty Roseberry, whose son, Michael, went on to captain Durham.

But the man given most of the credit for making it happen is Don Robson.

As chairman of the county cricket club, the county council and what was then the National Cricket Association, he carried the necessary clout to get things done. In December 1990, the Durham dreamers, who included long-serving secretary Jack Iley, gathered in the Callers Pegasus offices in Newcastle to hear Robson relay the news from Lord’s that the First-Class application had been successful.

They quickly appointed Teessider Geoff Cook, who had captained Northamptonshire and played for England, as director of cricket and he spent the final season of Minor Counties cricket assessing which of the team members might be good enough at the higher level.

The reality was that very few would have an impact, and, despite drafting in players like Ian Botham, Wayne Larkins, Paul Parker and Phil Bainbridge, Durham finished bottom of the table in three of their first six seasons and were never out of the bottom three.

They initially played at Durham University, Darlington, Hartlepool, Stockton and Gateshead Fell, before the first match was staged at Riverside in May 1995.

Australian legend David Boon, who had retired from Test cricket, was appointed as captain in 1997 and a member was heard to remark: “It’s Daniel Boon we need.”

The team finished next to the bottom in his first season, rose to 14th (out of 18) in 1998 and eighth in 1999, his last year, thereby qualifying for the inaugural division one when the championship was split.

They were immediately relegated and even slipped to the foot of division two before the seeds of the recent success were sown with the appointment of Australian Mike Hussey as captain for the 2005 season.

Cook and Martyn Moxon, who was head coach at the time, had identified Hussey as the best man for the job and they left nothing to chance in securing him.

It was also the year when current captain Dale Benkenstein arrived, and although Hussey stayed only for one season, in which promotion was achieved, the team has continued to go from strength to strength.

Much of that has been down to the ambition of Clive Leach, a former television executive, who was brought in as chairman in 2004. Bob Jackson had stood in for a year following the resignation of Robson’s successor, building society boss Bill Midgley.

Midgley had led the fight for Test match status, initially in the face of some hostility from other counties. The existing Test match counties wanted to hang on to what they already had, while others saw Durham as upstarts.

But Midgley resisted all that, arguing that if cricket wanted to attract a new audience, Durham could tap further into the North and into Scotland.

He walked out when he was harangued by members about the construction of a leisure centre, which was not in the original plans.

It is now part of the fabric and the development continued with the opening of the media and education centre in 2005, followed by the unveiling of further plans last month.

They involve £45m worth of expenditure, to include a hotel, which puts into perspective the changes since £3m was originally committed to create the ground in 1993.

Leach, who played for Warwickshire in the late Fifties and for Durham as a minor county while with the Bishop Auckland club, has been a low-profile chairman.

But chief executive David Harker is convinced that he has had a huge impact.

“Getting Clive involved was about raising the funds to develop the stadium,” said Harker. “But he made it very clear from day one that if we were to have any credibility, we had to invest in the core business.

“The development of the ground didn’t make sense otherwise. We didn’t have the working capital to finance team building, so it was risky. But he was adamant, and with the confidence that came from his success in business he was comfortable with taking the risk.

“It gave Geoff Cook the opportunity to recruit players who have helped us win the title, so Clive’s commitment to cricket has been massively influential.”