Durham unveil ambitious plans for the Riverside

Apr 2 2008 by Luke Edwards, The Journal

DURHAM are planning to transform their Riverside ground into a 20,000-capacity stadium after plans were put in place to build a new stand at their Chester-le-Street home.

The Riverside has already hosted three Test matches and a number of one-day internationals, but the county are keen to add weight to their bids for the top matches by creating more permanent seats.

At present, the club have to hire temporary seating to expand the ground’s capacity to around 16,000 for internationals but, in plans – which also include the construction of a hotel – shown at the annual general meeting last night, they hope to have completed the ground development by the start of the 2010 season.

“We are working on plans at the moment and work is at quite an advanced stage,” said Durham chief executive David Harker. “If we can get planning permission, the ground will increase its capacity to around 20,000.

“We hope to build a second tier on the south east stand and then fill in the gap between it and the media centre. We also plan to build a hotel on site, although this will be separate from the stand.

“That is the vision and we hope to get planning permission later this year to start work on the project. It is quite an aggressive timescale but work could begin

this year and part of it could be complete by the summer of 2009.”

Durham already struggle to fill the Riverside for domestic matches, but that could also be set to change as the county are to take an equally ambitious stance to their future on the pitch, particularly where Twenty20 cricket is concerned.

There are bold initiatives within the game to create a Champions League-style competition for Twenty20 cricket, with the best teams from across the globe playing each other. And Durham fully intend to be one of them, despite the fact they have one of the worst records in English cricket in that form of the game.

Harker said: “We cannot ignore the commercial significance of Twenty20 cricket and we have a three-year plan to make us far more competitive in that form of cricket.

“We hope that, one day, we will be able to have crowds of around 18,000-20,000 people watching us in that competition and it is not unrealistic if we can tap into the same sort of passion we see at the region’s football clubs.

“It is also not unrealistic when you see the sorts of crowds that Middlesex, Surrey, Yorkshire and even Hampshire have attracted in recent years.”