FOR 101 days, the clock beside the scoreboard had been ticking away, counting down the hours, minutes and seconds until the Riverside ground at Chester-le-Street became the first new Test venue in this country for 101 years.

With the days, hours and minutes reading zero, and with the two English batsmen at the crease having taken their guard and waiting for play to begin, the crowd was exhorted to join in with the last ten seconds of Durham's wait.

Enthusiastically, the classes of schoolchildren took up the count down in their high-pitched voices, and when the clock reached zero they cheered loudly.

Around the ground, a murmur of polite applause began.

Football crowds greet the start of a match with a beer-fuelled roar that gets trapped beneath the eaves of the overhanging stadium roofs and cannot escape until the eardrums have been burst.

Cricket crowds, open to the heavens, applaud gently at the start of play, making a delicate pit-patter like summer leaves rustling appreciatively in a sudden breeze on a hot day.

Yesterday's applause began politely that way, but then took on a life of its own, growing and swelling through the temporary stands and on to the pavilion steps until it became a proud, leg-thumping noise.

Yet they weren't applauding the English batsmen or the Zimbabwe fielders.

They weren't applauding the start of the Second Test. They were applauding the ground, the achievement and the moment.

Marcus Trescothick studiously ignored the first delivery from Heath Streak, but as the ball was thrown from the wicketkeeper Tatenda Taibu through the slip cordon and back to the bowler, Durham had joined an exclusive club: it had become only the eighth Test ground in the country, and the 87th - and most northerly - in the world.

"It has felt like history," said Nigel Bowen, an England regular from Cambridge, "especially coming so quickly after Durham achieved first class status."

"It's nice to be here on the first day," said Geoffrey Markall from Grange-over-Sands in Cumbria. "It's a very pleasant ground in the open countryside, and the opportunity to see Test matches if you live up north is very limited."

Sharing the moment in the South Terrace was a string of septuagenarians in straw boaters and blazers, with huge cool boxes at their feet that were so well-stocked they finished lunch with a cheeseboard and grapes.

Their number included the former vice-lieutenant of the county, Kit Bartram, who returned from the bar with two-thirds of a pint of white wine in his glass - "to decant", he explained.

Nearby were the Horden lads, sustained on lager and burgers, becoming increasingly loud and sunburnt as the day wore on. Has ever an appeal in a Test match been greeted with a bellow of: "Give ower, man.

Hoy it back to the booler and gan on with it."?

Behind them was an equally loud party of London stockbrokers and property developers who were more intimately acquainted with share prices than batting averages but still cricket-lovers.

They'd caught a cab to the ground from their hotel on Newcastle's Quayside, and when one of their number crept out to the toilet his roommate exploded so that the whole stand could hear: "He's got a device that he wore during the night because, apparently, he forgets to breath when he's asleep and dies!" They blagged their way into the pavilion for lunch and never returned, which was unfortunate because they made fascinating listening - and if they'd dosed off in the afternoon sunshine it would have made electrifying viewing.

So with the cricket on the first day being pleasingly slow, the first ever 50 of the first ever Test at the Riverside was recorded by four shirtless, shaven-headed lads who jumped up at 3.10pm and waved a large column of stacked, empty plastic pint pots over their heads.

"Our half century," they shouted, proudly, and just standing was something of an achievement.

But such a record will only be recorded as an extra in the scorebook of this historic day - quite literally a bye-the-bye.

John Thompson from Carlisle said: "We've talked about coming over before, but the Test tempted us over and we'll probably do it again for county matches."

His wife Susan added: "It is now the nearest Test ground to us.

"It is a great opportunity for us, and we've come and watched the countdown and been part of history."

At the close of play, Durham chairman Bill Midgley looked back over the day. "The highlight for me was 10.45am and the countdown to the first ball," he said. "That is the one thing we can never repeat.

"I never thought we would see a Test match held up for a whole minute for a countdown - it was great to see but probably not quite cricket."

Not quite cricket, but quite definitely history.