Durham start new era under floodlights

There have been few more graphic testaments to Durham's cricketing obscurity in the last two years than the quiz show Who wants to be a Millionaire? A retired naval officer, Peter Lee, was about to become the first contestant in British television history to take home a million when he was asked which county played at Chester-le-Street. He declined the challenge and took £500,000 home instead.

If Durham fail to make bigger strides into the national consciousness over the next two years, it will not have been for the want of trying. It is 10 years this season since the county took the step into first-class cricket and there were evidently plans to invite back some of the old boys who have shared in the big adventure. But the Durham management shelved them. Even a knees up with Botham, Larkins, Graveney, Boon and Dean Jones came second to their all-consuming quest to turn cricket's north-east outpost into a top flight international venue.

Their efforts were rewarded last year with a place on the Test rota for an England-Zimbabwe match next summer. But on Thursday there is a more immediate milestone, when England meet India here in Durham's first one-day international under floodlights.

The undertaking is an arduous one since Durham possess neither floodlights nor a media facility and are 11,000 seats short of their desired capacity. They've examined the way golf courses convert themselves into temporary international stadiums and will be shipping the lot in, instead. That includes eight stacks of temporary floodlights (double the number required for Norwich Union League day-night games) to ensure the England management's doubts about the quality of lighting over the past few years are dispelled

A tidy income by the end of Thursday night might make the efforts all worthwhile – but Durham will see little of that either. Profits will top a few thousand pounds at best according to David Harker, the chief executive.

That's because on top of the £250,000 hire charges, he will be delivering a guaranteed payment of £275,000 to the ECB in return for the right to stage the game. The little publicised promise, delivered in Durham's pitch for international cricket, is revolutionary. It removes the financial risk to the ECB inherent in the tradition of Test match grounds handing back a percentage of all takings to the ECB, after taking out corporate hospitality receipts – international cricket's golden goose – for themselves. "For new clubs to get in on the scene there had to be an advantage for the ECB," Harker said. "This is it. We hope to see all grounds working that way."

All this endeavour must be sending chills through Old Trafford. While Durham has sold all 12,000 seats for its two previous one-day internationals and increased capacity to 17,000 for Thursday's game (putting it above Trent Bridge and Headingley and just below The Oval), Lancashire is currently labouring to make international cricket fizz at all. After a series of low attendances, Old Trafford's financial targets for the Sri Lanka Test were considerably lower than those set by Edgbaston and Trent Bridge this summer – though the exciting fifth-day finish helped Lancashire to meet theirs.

It is now an open secret that Old Trafford will be the casualty of Durham's first Test match. With three of the seven annual Tests effectively tied up by Lord's and the Oval, there was only room for one in northern England and Headingley got it.

Little wonder that Harker, a member of the Lord's working party which examined expanding the international venues, found Lancashire and Yorkshire the most resistant to Durham and Hampshire, whose impressive Rose Bowl should stage a one-day international within two years.

"Having established themselves over the years, their argument was 'why dilute crowds further by bringing in new venues'," Harker said. "They were less keen because they seemed to have more to lose. The Oval and Trent Bridge were more pragmatic."

Many Lancastrians consider a Zimbabwe Test to be no great loss. They have a particular appetite for one-day games, the marketing of which has becoming an Old Trafford speciality.

But Durham may have more collateral damage to deliver. If their pulling power, boosted by a vast catchment area which includes Scotland, continues to outpace Old Trafford's they will not just be settling for the Zimbabwes of Test cricket. "Zimbabwe next year is the big test," the chairman, Bill Midgeley, said. "We need the ground full on the first three days and that's not going to be easy but if we do it we're not waiting until 2005 to get a review of the Test allocations. We'll want to be elevated to the first ranks."

That kind of achievement might finally deliver some of the financial security Durham craves. Unlike the North-east's premier football and rugby union sides, the club has discovered no Sir John Hall – even though the millionaire has been generous with his topsoil: Durham's ex-groundsman asked for some because he knew the track at Wolviston cricket club within the millionaire's estate was as good as any in the area. Instead, the county which started professional life with £30,000 and a distinct lack of wealthy benefactors, has had to survive on corporate sponsorship alone.

The promise of international cricket is already offering more of it. It has seen Durham into advanced talks with a sponsor who wants naming rights to the Riverside. No deal of Foster's Oval proportions perhaps, but it will be worth tens of thousands of pounds – a small fortune considering Durham made a mere £20,000 profit last season.

The North-east regional development agency, OneNortheast, will also make a multi-million pound investment over three years in return for the use of Riverside to promote the region, on the back of international cricket. This, after a Durham University study put the financial benefits to the region's image of a single one-day international at £60m.

All this gives Durham some hope of meeting the £70,000 salaries needed to hold on to players like Paul Collingwood – an issue of deep significance since it was the frustration of seeing generations of the best local talent (A E Stoddard to Cecil Parkin, Colin Milburn to Bob Willis) leave for pro counties which made Durham quit Minor Counties in the first place. If Collingwood plays on Thursday, it will represent the rapid fulfilment of an aspiration voiced by Tom Graveney 12 years ago as he strode across what was then a piece of waste land beside the Wear for a promotional video articulating Durham's first-class cause. "We want someone born here and taught his cricket here to play cricket here for his country," he said.

The battle has hardly begun. For grandeur, the Riverside does not hold a torch to the established Test grounds and there will be considerable meteorological resistance, considering it is on the same latitude as southern Sweden.

But the players love the track and if the going gets tough, North-easterners need only recall Sunday 19 April 1992, and their first home game as a first-class county at Durham university's stunning ground on the banks of the Wear. Their opponents: Lancashire. Their winning margin: nine runs.