Captain Collingwood salutes spirited bowling effort, but Durham settle for Surrey draw

Surrey ended up on 244-6 in their second innings, batting out time despite sliding at one stage to a nervy 139-5 – leaving them 11 runs behind with 40 overs remaining to be bowled.

Ben Foakes and Tom Curran, however, then put on 83 in 28 overs for the sixth wicket, either side of tea, to thwart Durham’s attempts to force a result.

Durham captain Collingwood, who made 106 not out, from 141 balls with a six and 11 fours, said: “It’s a shame that we lost around 30 overs from the match due to rain and bad light on the first few days.

“It never really rained that hard, so that’s disappointing.

“But it’s also been a really good batting pitch – I’d say a five-day wicket really, or even a six-day one! So it’s been hard work for the bowlers and, over the match, we’ve played some excellent cricket and today, especially, we did really well to get them five wickets down and in with a chance of forcing a win. On that surface, it was a tremendous effort.”

On his own hundred, an individual Durham record 22nd in first-class cricket, Collingwood added: “All these milestones and records are great to look back on when you get to the end of your career, but we didn’t win the game and that’s the main thing you want at the end of a match.”

Stokes, who removed Arun Harinath, Rory Burns and Kumar Sangakkara in a post-lunch burst of 3-31 which give Durham a sniff of victory, ended with 3-69 from 21 overs in his last Championship appearance before England’s Test series against Sri Lanka.

Off-spinner Ryan Pringle had Steven Davies caught behind for 32 and Brydon Carse, in his first over, saw Jason Roy superbly caught low down by a diving Scott Borthwick in the gully for 34.

Zafar Ansari, the Surrey all-rounder, was also only going to bat if necessary because of a badly bruised thumb. Fielding off his own bowling late on day three, he was struck on the same left thumb he fractured and badly dislocated last September, an injury which forced him to withdraw from England’s winter Test squad.

By the time the last hour began, Surrey were 50 runs ahead at 200-5 and – after 10 of the scheduled final 16 overs – hands were shaken on the draw with Surrey taking 11 points and Durham 12.