The 2025 English county cricket season begins on 4 April when 18 counties will play across Divisions One and Two of the Rothesay County Championship.

One side that could rival champions Surrey for the title are Durham.

The North East side will face Yorkshire, Sussex, Nottinghamshire, Warwickshire, Worcestershire and four other counties.

You can read all our Division Two previews here.

2024 season

Durham had a disappointing first-class season after being touted as a challenger to Surrey’s dominance.

They only managed to win four of their 14 Division One games, drawing five, losing four and having one abandoned.

They finished 60 points behind the South London champions and 37 ahead of ninth-placed Lancashire, so were comfortably mid-table.

South African batter David Bedingham was the county and the division’s leading run-scorer with an outstanding 1,331 runs in just 11 matches.

He averaged 78.29, hit six centuries, two more than anyone else, and scored a strike rate of 78.06.

He also notched his career-best score of 279, which came against Lancashire in September.

Alex Lees and Ollie Robinson also scored over 800 runs in the season.

England bowler Matthew Potts led with the ball as his 33 wickets in just eight games beat Ben Raine by one.

Potts averaged 25.39 and took 9/68 against Lancashire in September (the same game as Bedingham’s 279), which was the best innings figures in the whole division.

They failed to qualify for the knockout rounds of the Metro Bank One Day Cup after winning only four of their eight games in Group A, finishing one point behind third-placed Hampshire.

Defeat to Derbyshire in their final game crushed their hopes of progression after being unable to defend 253.

Netherlands all-rounder Colin Ackermann top-scored in his first year at the county with 316 runs at 45.14.

Fellow all-rounder Paul Coughlin impressed with the ball, taking 12 wickets at 19.33 in just five games.

They snuck into the quarter-finals of the Vitality Blast due to victory over Derbyshire in their final game and defeat for Leicestershire, who sat in fourth with one game to go.

However, they fell to a five-wicket defeat to Surrey in their away quarter-final as the hosts chased down 163 with two overs remaining.

Opener Graham Clark only averaged 24.76 but was the side’s highest run-scorer with 322, sitting at 28th in the competition’s charts.

Raine had a very good tournament with 21 wickets at 16.85 as only six bowlers dismissed more players than him.

Squad

2025 will be the third season in charge for Australian Ryan Campbell, who replaced James Franklin in December 2022.

The former wicketkeeper spent five years in charge of the Netherlands after a playing career that included two ODIs for Australia and three T20Is for Hong Kong.

He made his debut for the latter at age 44, becoming the oldest-ever player to make their international T20 debut.

Campbell led Durham to the Division Two title in 2023 in his first season as head coach.

He will work alongside new club captain Alex Lees, who took over from Scott Borthwick in December.

34-year-old Borthwick has signed a new two-year deal as a player-coach.

Lees signed for Durham from Yorkshire at the end of the 2018 season and has since scored 8,245 runs in 160 games across all competitions.

He has also earned 10 Test caps for England during his time with the county.

The three overseas players to have signed deals to play at the Riverside Stadium in 2025 are Bedingham, Brendan Doggett and Zak Foulkes.

Bedingham signed a four-year contract extension in 2021 and will enter his sixth season in the North East.

Doggett, who plays for South Australia, will be available for six Championship games until the end of May, beginning with the second match of the season against Warwickshire on 11 April.

New Zealander Foulkes has signed a deal to play in the whole T20 Blast group stage, after doing so for Birmingham Bears last year.

Other newcomers will be Emilio Gay, Sam Conners and Will Rhodes.

Gay has signed a three-year deal after six seasons at Northamptonshire, where he scored 3,824 runs in 87 matches.

He joined the North East side on loan for the final two games of the season and scored 100 runs, with one half-century.

Conners has arrived from Derbyshire, where he took 158 wickets across all formats, and will be at Durham until the end of the 2026 season.

Rhodes joins from Warwickshire after captaining them to the County Championship and Bob Willis Trophy titles in 2021, as well as scoring over 7,000 runs and taking 119 wickets since signing in 2017.

They have released Jonathan Bushnell, Brandon Glover and Oliver Gibson after all failed to retain regular first-team places.

Overseas players Scott Boland, Chemar Holder, Ben Dwarshuis and Ashton Turner have also left, with the latter two signing for Worcestershire and Lancashire.

Joining Turner at Old Trafford will be Michael Jones, who has returned to his home county after seven seasons at Durham.

The Scotland international played 89 games in his time at the Riverside, scoring over 3,000 runs.

Four Durham players will take part in The Hundred: Ben McKinney (Manchester Originals), Brydon Carse, Matthew Potts and Graham Clark (Northern Superchargers).

Full squad (as of 29/03/25):

Batters – David Bedingham (O), Graham Clark, Emilio Gay, Alex Lees (Captain), Ben McKinney

All-rounders – Colin Ackermann, Scott Borthwick, Paul Coughlin, Bas de Leede, Zak Foulkes, Ben Raine, Will Rhodes, Ben Stokes

Wicketkeepers – Haydon Mustard, Ollie Robinson

Fast bowlers – Brydon Carse, Sam Conners, Brendan Doggett, Daniel Hogg, Mitchel Killeen, Stanley McAlindon, James Minto, Matthew Potts, Luke Robinson, Mark Wood

Spinners – George Drissell, Callum Parkinson, Nathan Sowter

Overseas Players

The name that will be very familiar to all county fans is David Bedingham.

The 30-year-old South African has scored 5,731 runs across all formats for Durham in 108 games since 2020.

He has played 12 times in Test cricket, averaging 33.94 with one century, and has scored over 8,000 first-class runs overall at 50.36.

He will be joined by Brendan Doggett, who is set for his first spell in county cricket.

The 30-year-old Australian seamer has taken 168 red-ball dismissals at 27.00 for Queensland and South Australia.

He has recently earned international recognition with an Australia A call-up in their unofficial Test against India in October, where he took 6/15 before being named as an injury replacement for Josh Hazlewood for the Australian first-team, although he did not make his Test debut.

Even more recently, he was named the player of the match in the Sheffield Shield final as his South Australia side won the competition for the first time in 29 years.

Doggett took five-fors in both innings against his old state Queensland to finish with match figures of 11/140, which are now the best-ever figures in a Shield final.

The final overseas, Zak Foulkes, has also entered the international stage in the past year with one ODI and 10 T20s for New Zealand in the past 12 months.

The 22-year-old has picked up 13 wickets at 23.46 in T20Is and averages less than 20 with the ball in domestic T20s.

He took eight wickets in seven Blast matches for Birmingham Bears last year and can also contribute with the bat, having scored three half-centuries in first-class cricket.

Key Player

Having already spoken about him, there is not much more to say about David Bedingham but he will undoubtedly be key to Durham’s success in 2025.

The middle-order batter has been one of the most consistent players in Division One in recent seasons, which led to his international call-up, and will again be one of the players who bowlers will fear facing most.

However, if included in South Africa’s squads for the World Test Championship final and two-Test series against Zimbabwe shortly after, he will miss likely miss most of the Vitality Blast group stage and important red-ball matches against Sussex and Surrey.

Despite this, Bedingham will still play almost all of Durham’s Championship matches, which is his best format.

If he replicates his 2024 stats, then the county may just overthrow Surrey from their spot at the top of the county game.

One to look out for

Durham possess a very talented crop of youngsters including Ben McKinney, Daniel Hogg and Haydon Mustard, but the most exciting may be James Minto.

The left-arm fast bowler made his List A debut in July, aged just 16, and took a modest two wickets in his two 50-over games.

However, it was the County Championship where he exploded onto the scene bowling 87mph against champions Surrey at the Oval.

At just 16 years and 296 days, he became Durham’s youngest-ever first-class player and the second-youngest from any county to take a wicket since the Second World War.

He also took 5/21 against a Zimbabwe A side containing nine Test cricketers on Durham’s recent pre-season tour.

Bowling at extreme pace for a teenager, Minto looks to be an excellent prospect for Durham and he could be given a very early chance in his career to secure a regular spot in their red-ball side.

With Matthew Potts and Brydon Carse likely to be on England duty throughout the summer, Mark Wood battling injury issues and Brendon Doggett’s deal having expired, Minto may find himself starting week-in-week-out in the Championship come the second half of the season.

Prediction

If Durham can count on Bedingham to produce a similar return in 2025, have Matthew Potts available for a large part of the season and see Ben Stokes make an impact in the first two months, then they will be Surrey’s greatest opposition.

Whether that leads to them winning their first County Championship in 12 years remains to be seen but they will certainly push Surrey closer than any other side has recently.

In the One Day Cup, they have a surprisingly low amount of players in The Hundred so could mount a serious challenge for the trophy, as well as using the competition as a chance to develop their many young players.

A run to the last four in the Blast seems unlikely due to the sheer power of other counties but another quarter-final appearance is not unreasonable.

Durham’s county season gets underway on Friday 4 April when they will face Nottinghamshire at Trent Bridge.