Durham needed only 37 minutes on the final morning to wrap up a seven-wicket victory over Leicestershire in the County Championship.
Michael Jones, who fell three runs short of a century in the first innings, added a 58-ball 50 before Durham, chasing 105, completed the win effectively inside eight sessions after rain washed out more than two thirds of the opening day.
Nic Maddinson finished unbeaten on 31 after on-driving Michael Finan for the winning boundary in the ninth over of the final morning, ensuring that England pace bowler Matty Potts’ outstanding performance to take 13 wickets in the match was in a winning cause.
Durham themselves have had a poor 2022. This was only their second red-ball success of a season in which they finished bottom or second-bottom of their group in both white-ball competitions.
Yet they always had the measure of Leicestershire, who are in danger of suffering a fourth winless season in the past 10 years.
Bowled out for 202 in the first innings after Durham had won the toss, Potts taking 6-52, Leicestershire conceded a first-innings lead of 94 before being dismissed for 198 in the second innings despite Louis Kimber’s 75.
Potts went one better than in the first innings by finishing with 7-49, recording his second haul of 10 wickets or more in a match with overall career-best figures of 13-101.
Durham resumed on 51-2, with Jones signalling their intention to finish the job quickly by driving Finan’s first ball of the day for four.
Jones, who played some second XI matches for Leicestershire in 2017, completed his second half-century of the match when he forced Chris Wright through the covers for his eighth boundary.
Wright, underlining the story of the match in that it was a pitch on which no batter ever felt comfortable for long, hit back by bowling Jones next ball, yet it was no more than a fleeting moment of encouragement for the home side.
