Former Australian ODI representative, now Durham coach Ryan Campbell took to social media to express his frustrations after his side were denied the chance to chase their target of four to win by Gloucestershire in a County Championship match at Chester-le-Street.

Durham, who are top of the Division Two table, bowled the Cameron Bancroft captained Gloucestershire out for 250 late on day three, but they will have to come back on Sunday to knock off the tiny target.

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Umpires James Tredwell, who played two Tests and 45 ODIs for England as an off spinner, and Steve O’Shaughnessy declared it was too dark at 6.20pm local time to come back onto the field.

Durham will now face a nervous wait as a poor weather forecast on the final day could salvage a draw for the visitors – who were knocked over for only 137 in their first innings.

“Cricket sometimes doesn’t help itself. Before everyone loads up on the poor old umpires, it’s not their fault,” Campbell wrote on X.

Durham won inside three days in their most recent match against Derbyshire.

The night after clinching victory, fast bowler Brydon Carse ended up in handcuffs outside a nightclub as former England skipper Ben Stokes watched on.

The mood among the Durham players, which includes Carse and Stokes, is certainly more subdued this time around.

Durham’s Kasey Aldridge, who took nine wickets for the match, stayed tight lipped when asked about how his team felt about having to come back again.

“Yeah, I can’t tell you. No comment on that,” he said.

Gloucestershire coach Mark Alleyne, who played ten ODIs for England, revealed at the end of the day’s play that his team denied a request to get the game done on Saturday evening.

“They asked if we would bowl our spinners to finish the game. Of course, we said no, we’ll bowl our quick bowlers, in which case it became bad light, so we’ll come back tomorrow,” Alleyne said.

“I mean, we’ve been outplayed, of course, but there’s certain parts of the game that we feel we were really hard done by some really poor decisions, in my view, and I hope they get a chance to look back at those, but one of the poorest is playing in the light that we did for so long.

“So, with that in mind, we thought we’d hedge our bets and see if it might rain all day tomorrow, so you never know.”

Gloucestershire ensured that Durham will have to bat again with a quick fire 39-run last wicket stand between No.11 James Langridge (36) and No.9 Sai Kishore (29*).

But Alleyne believes they should not have been out there as Langridge flayed six fours and a six, while Kishore cleared the rope twice earlier in his innings.

“I’m not sure where to start, really,” Alleyne said.

“I mean, 45 minutes before we lost the last wicket, it was too dark to play, which would have been consistent with all the other days that we played.

“We had probably 50 minutes of cricket there that we probably shouldn’t have done.”

It was not only in the county championship where bad weather caused issues in England.

Play was abandoned on day three of England’s Test match against Pakistan an hour before the scheduled close.

When the news was announced at Lord’s, the crowd, who will receive a 50 per cent refund on their tickets, booed, having only seen 24.5 overs for the day.

Sure enough, the skies cleared soon after and former England captain Nasser Hussain unloaded on Sky Sports.

“That’s a joke, honestly a joke,” he said.

“I earlier said how good the umpires have been. These fans have waited all afternoon for it to stop raining. It’s now bright. There’s blue sky in the distance. That is an unbelievable decision, it really is.

“In about five minutes’ time it’s going to be sunny here.”