Winners are Grinners

by Michelle
Wow what a day yesterday was! As I mentioned in my first post, I am very lucky to be over here working in England and yesterday this was epitomized when Durham won the LV= County Championship title for 2013.  When I first arrived at the club the general media view was that the club would struggle in the 4-day competition after losing several experienced players and signing no overseas star. However the side rallied, led by Paul Collingwood and England reps Graham Onions and Ben Stokes, our young local guys put their hands up when it mattered! The side had a superb season, particularly in the back half with the win against Nottingham yesterday (which sealed the title) our 5th win in a row.  There is still one match to go in the Championships but the lead is now too much for Durham's nearest rivals Yorkshire and even if they win their last 2 games they would not catch us so the trophy was handed over!

It was probably one of the busiest post-match media arrangements I have ever had to manage.  When we hosted the Ashes a month or so ago it was a crazy week but with it being an ECB run event I did not having to manage the media requests for players which was different to this where the players I manage were in demand!

There was a lot of media interest from all over the country-lots of print journalists from local and national papers alongside your cricinfo reporters and the like.  There was a also a big television presence, with the LVCC games not televised we had Sky, BBC and ITV all present to get highlights and all the post-match colour.

I think our Captain Paul Collingwood was obviously the most in demand and he did about 40 minutes of interviews and photos. There were a couple of times we had close calls when I had to sprint up to the players balcony and quickly get players for live crosses but we got there in the end and with them all being in good spirits it was made pretty easy!

Because my job also covers digital I was madly tweeting from the field and trying to capture all the craziness for those online followers and after all the media had wrapped up it was time to do the online and digital coverage for our website and social media.  I could not believe the amount of tweets our account was receiving, I had never seen anything like it, to this moment I have no read all the tweets but wow we got a few!  After another hour or so and finishing match reports and making sure the media were all happy in the media centre etc I made my way back to my desk to see the champagne had already been opened!  We had BBC broadcasting from the ground doing their sports program live and my only other official task for the night was to drag the champagne drenched trophy away from the change rooms for half an hour for them to use during their broadcast!

Celebrations went long into the night and it was great to be able to sit back and celebrate the success.  It is now starting to feel like the end of the season and I am mentally preparing to do my 3rd season in a row back in Australia soon! I feel pretty lucky that I have been part of Australia's 4-day and England's 4-day championship winning teams for 2013 in the Tigers winning the Shield and now Durham winning the County Champs!