Two title in the National League up with wins over Somerset and Warwickshire, but as Sussex won their final games as well Durham found the gap too large to bridge, and ended in second place in the League as well. County Championship: Durham v Derbyshire (30 August-2 September) Derbyshire (10pts) drew with Durham (8pts) Derbyshire medium pacer Ian Hunter, formerly of Durham, got career-best bowling figures of five for 63 as Derbyshire - the only winless team in the Championship so far this season - came three runs away from recording a win at Riverside Ground against the table-toppers from Durham. In Durham's first innings, where Hunter got his five-for, nine batsmen reached double figures, yet only two passed 30 and no one made it to fifty, as Dale Benkenstein top-scored with 49. Liam Plunkett dug out one wicket in the first evening and one on the second morning, as Derbyshire lost their first four for 64, but a 231-minute partnership between Jon Moss (92 runs) and Chris Bassano (87) yielded 148 runs to take Derbyshire within 18 of Durham's first-innings total of 230. Luke Sutton hit 55 off 119 balls, and Derbyshire made their way to 326 in 112.4 overs. Australian opener Jimmy Maher recorded his second successive single-figure score in his first match for Durham, as the hosts made it 59 for 3, but centuries from Paul Collingwood and Dale Benkenstein sent them back in the lead. The pair added 206 runs together before Collingwood was out for 112 - his sixth first-class century in twelve matches - while Benkenstein continued to 162 not out, adding 80 runs with Gareth Breese and 21 for the ninth wicket with Brad Williams before declaring. The declaration set Derbyshire 280 to win in 66 overs, and Michael di Venuto and Steve Stubbings put on 91 for the first wicket to cut that down to 189. They had used two hours to hit those 91, though, leaving two hours for the remaining 189 - and though Stubbings completed his century, the rest of the batting order could not quite hit quite quickly enough, and they finished on 277 for 6 - three runs short of victory. (Cricinfo scorecard) National League: Durham v Kent (4 September) Durham (4pts) beat Kent (0pts) by eight wickets Kent Spitfires had their run of three successive victories broken by Durham Dynamos, never recovering from their initial position