There are procuring centres, enterprise parks and housing estates in Britain the place cricket followers vulnerable to nostalgia – are there any others? – could really feel they’ll, with the breeze in the fitting path, catch a scent of linseed oil and luncheon meat in Claire’s Equipment, or hear a distant barking of ‘Good areas, skip, good areas!’ wafting from throughout the trampolines and carports…
Locations the place the babble of the on a regular basis appears more likely to be ended prematurely by the spectral apparition of a person in a white coat eradicating the bails, with buyers shooed, tutting, from B&Q, and squealing toddlers silenced as their paddling swimming pools deflate.
Meandering by way of these emptying areas at shut of play, chances are you’ll end up in elegiac temper, questioning wistfully, because the chattering herd wind slowly towards the automobile park, and the safety man plods his weary means, what number of mute inglorious Arthur Milton innings right here could relaxation?
Outgrounds have a particular place within the hearts of cricket lovers, the extra so when not solely deserted by their county, however demolished and constructed over.
Flicking by way of the primary Wisden I purchased, as a spotty 14-year-old in 1975, I come throughout a diagram of Hastings Central Cricket Floor. Despite the fact that I by no means visited, it’s arduous to not really feel a pang of eager for the deckchair enclosures, the tiered free seating and the refreshment marquee.
The sq. – on which Ranji, George Hirst, Duleepsinhji and Ted Dexter struck double-hundreds, Australian medium-pacer Charles ‘The Terror’ Turner took 17 for 50 in opposition to an England XI in 1888, and Maurice Tate’s seamers wobbled within the sea breeze – is now buried beneath the Priory Meadow procuring centre.
Sussex v Lancashire on the Hastings Central Recreation Floor in 1985
Ted Dexter patrols the boundary for Sussex in opposition to Kent at Hastings
The Golden of Age of CB Fry and the Jam Sahib has made means for the Priory Meadow procuring centre
The Golden Age of CB Fry and the Jam Sahib has made means for the much less glistering epoch of Poundland and Primark, although the presence of Specsavers will please terrace wits with a droll line in umpire gags.
If Hastings was a ramshackle, romantic relic of cricket’s gilded previous, Harlow Sportcentre, in Essex, was a imaginative and prescient of our never-had-it-so-good future, a beacon for the promised Leisure Age which might see all Britons working 30-hour weeks, retiring at 50 and spending their time enjoying squash or internet hosting fondue events.
This was the primary purpose-built sports activities centre in Britain, and its changing-rooms have been formally opened by FIFA president Sir Stanley Rous in 1960. A yr later, the cricket facility hosted its opening match, a one-day sport between sides captained by Doug Insole and Peter Could.
In April 1970, the native press introduced that the Sportcentre would host a cricket competition from June 27 to July 3. This could characteristic Essex enjoying a Pakistan Below 25s staff, then a Championship match in opposition to Kent.
The proclamation was overegged. There was no touring staff from Pakistan that summer season, although cricket followers in Harlow did see Essex beating a Cambridge College facet together with a 23-year-old Majid Khan. The house spinners, David Acfield and Ray East, proved an excessive amount of, even for Khan, as the scholars have been dismissed for 47 of their second innings.
Amid carnival scenes supplied by sponsors Harlow Improvement Company – they erected marquees with shows dedicated to ‘gardens and horticulture’, ‘holidays and journey’, ‘sports activities tools’ and ‘common’ – Kent arrived. Mike Denness stroked an unbeaten 167, lofty Norman Graham and bustling John Shepherd terrorised the house batsmen, and Kent gained by an innings.
Harlow Sportcentre by no means hosted one other first-class match, although Khan did return in 1981, when (aged 34) he hit a century for the long-expected Pakistan Below 25s in opposition to Essex 2nd XI (captained by Denness).
By 2010, a housing property had been constructed on the positioning. A brand new facility, Harlow Leisurezone opened in its stead. It has a gymnasium, swimming pool and spa, however no cricket pitch: the summer season sport’s place within the train routine of the nation appropriated by aquarobics, Zumba and CrossFit trainers.
Harlow’s Sportcentre has been changed by a Leisurezone – it has a gymnasium, swimming pool and spa, however no cricket pitch
Hoffmann’s Sports activities and Social Membership Floor in close by Chelmsford has additionally been obliterated. The bottom belonged to a ball-bearing manufacturing facility on Rainsford Highway, and staged a brace of Championship matches, with Essex dropping to Lancashire in 1959 and drawing with Derbyshire in 1961.
A number of days after that draw got here the bottom’s most fun occasion, a first-class sport between Essex and a robust South African growth facet referred to as the Fezelas – Zulu for water scorpion – which included Eddie Barlow, Colin Bland and Peter Pollock.
The attendance was barely 500 over the three days, however these current on the final noticed a feverish conclusion, because the vacationers’ 21-year-old wicketkeeper, Dennis Lindsay, smashed 5 successive sixes off leg-spinner Invoice Greensmith. (Solely Arthur Wellard had beforehand hit 5 in a row, in 1936 and once more in 1938.) Within the late Eighties, the land was offered to a constructing firm, the ultimate residual crackle of Lindsay’s pyrotechnics embedded in concrete.
The Erinoid floor – named after a close-by plastics manufacturing facility – in Stroud was in a pure bowl, surrounded by bucolic hills. One perimeter fence was a protracted line of ochre canvas, an prolonged seaside windbreak a good distance from the ocean. It hosted 14 first-class matches between 1956 and 1963. The wooded hills have turn out to be housing estates, the disco that after missed the pitch lengthy demolished, the cricket area – a contented looking floor for Arthur Milton, whose 131 in opposition to Leicestershire in 1963 was the final first-class hundred made there – now a buying and selling property.
Leicestershire is residence to 3 grounds later buried beneath brick and tarmac. The county performed 17 Championship matches at Coventry Highway, Hinckley, between 1951 and 1964, their final a humid squib – bundled out twice by Kent, with mighty John Dye (11 for 57) rampant. A leisure centre opened on the positioning in 1977, and was demolished in 2016, to the dismay of council-tax payers.
In 1965, the Foxes gained their ultimate county match on the fittingly named Brush Floor, Loughborough (owned by the Brush Electrical Machines Firm): off-spinner John Savage, who took 9 wickets, and Sri Lankan Clive Inman, who hit 125, have been the heroes, as Middlesex have been stuffed by 10 wickets.
The City Floor in Coalville hosted only one first-class sport, in 1950, Leicestershire crumpling to defeat by Warwickshire. The gradual left-arm bowling of Abdul Kardar, grandfather of Pakistan cricket, proved decisive. Maybe the brand new streets echo often to the ghostly applause of native pitmen celebrating a boundary from bespectacled Charles Palmer, described by Trevor Bailey as ‘a pure for the function of hen-pecked financial institution clerk in a farce’. He struck 143 in a dropping trigger.
Southampton has misplaced two venues: the Antelope Floor and its successor, Northlands Highway. It was on the Antelope (the identify taken from a neighbouring lodge) that William Mycroft, a luxuriously moustachioed left-arm quick bowler with a controversial yorker, ran amok in opposition to Hampshire in 1876. A century and a half later, his figures of 17 for 103 (with 12 bowled) stay a Derbyshire report.
Len Hutton bats for Yorkshire on the Circle in Hull in 1955. The bottom is now the house of Hull Metropolis and the Hull rugby league staff
Whether or not or not he pinged the odd one, many consider fellow cricketer Sir Arthur Conan Doyle appropriated the identify for Sherlock Holmes’s smarter brother. The scene of his heroics, although, lies beneath an NHS clinic.
Northlands Highway, with its twin pavilions, witnessed many information. On three separate events it was the setting for a batter to succeed in 1,000 runs earlier than the tip of Could (a feat achieved solely 9 occasions in all). Wally Hammond managed it in 1927, whereas Don Bradman did so in 1930 and 1938. And in 1996, Kevan James took 4 wickets in 4 balls in opposition to the touring Indians (his victims included Sachin Tendulkar and Rahul Dravid), after which cracked a century.
Extra surprisingly nonetheless, the bottom performed a component in a infamous 1947 greyhound racing scandal on the adjoining Southampton Stadium (the barking often disturbed snoozing cricket supporters on heat evenings). Members of a doping gang used the Northlands Highway scoreboard as a vantage level to observe occasions on the observe, the place canine have been surreptitiously fed fishcakes laced with phenobarbitone. A housing property covers the positioning of this infamy.
Newport’s Rodney Parade, with its refreshment tent and durable brick pavilion (the 2 tall chimneys suggesting chilly Could mornings and September evenings), grew to become a first-class floor in 1935, a yr after Monmouthshire CCC had agreed to merge with Glamorgan. The primary necessary guests have been Leicestershire, and a civic reception was held within the city corridor.
Extra common opponents have been Gloucestershire who, on their third go to, in 1939, took half in a outstanding match. Glamorgan have been dismissed for 196, earlier than Hammond struck 302 within the guests’ 505 for 5 declared. Undaunted, Emrys Davies hit again with an unbeaten 287 (the very best rating for Glamorgan till the twenty first century) to save lots of the day. By the Sixties, crowds had dwindled, and the conflict with Warwickshire in 1965 proved the final first-class sport at Rodney Parade.
Championship cricket returned to Newport, nonetheless, in 2019, when Gloucestershire performed Glamorgan on the city’s new floor, Spytty Park. By then, the council had constructed a major college on Rodney Parade.
A extra ignominious destiny befell The Circle in Hull, which between 1899 and 1974 hosted 89 first-class matches. On heat summer season days, the spectacular pavilion – which seemed like a grand pub designed by Edwin Lutyens – was besieged by battalions of deckchairs.
The pitch had much less of an amiable vacation air. Mushy and gripping, it was an ever-generous present to Yorkshire’s string of gradual left-armers. Hedley Verity took at the least 12 first-class wickets at The Circle on three events, and Wilfred Rhodes twice, whereas Johnny Wardle’s 16 for 112 in opposition to Sussex in 1954 was a career-best. After Yorkshire stopped travelling to their most easterly outpost, the Circle fell into disrepair.
The Crabble Floor in Dover, Kent, whch hosted first-class matches from 1907 to 1976
The pavilion was condemned, then demolished in 1987. The final match was performed there in 2000, and the MKM Stadium – residence to Hull Metropolis and to Hull rugby league membership – now stands on the positioning, a painful 25,586-seat reminder of the place cricket now holds within the sporting lifetime of the nation, even in Yorkshire.
An analogous level could possibly be made about Bramall Lane, the one Check floor to have vanished, its as soon as well-known sq. absorbed by the stands of Sheffield United FC. In 1902, England met Australia right here, and have been trounced by 143 runs. They didn’t come again.
Many visiting gamers should have wished they might additionally keep away. Bramall Lane was infamous for the commercial smog which wreathed it like a murky muffler, and for its vociferous followers. Throughout one encounter between Yorkshire and Middlesex in 1924, the umpires needed to cease play whereas appeals have been made for quiet – not often in brief provide at county matches these days. No matter others thought, the Yorkshire gamers beloved it.
After the ultimate match in 1973 (a rain-soaked Roses draw), the sq. was offered off at 20p per sq. yard. Geoffrey Boycott purchased the size of a batting strip to put in his again backyard.
Solely rugby union is now performed at Dover’s Crabble Floor, which started life as a first-class venue in 1907, when Kent have been led out by their fair-haired Outdated Etonian skipper Cloudesley ‘Slug’ Marsham for a match with Gloucestershire.
The bottom was an ideal oval, surrounded by an asphalt biking observe and, throughout Dover Cricket Week, a creamy encampment of canvas. The pitch had been laid by the nice Kent gradual bowler Alec Hearne. Maybe he ready a floor to his personal liking, as a result of Tich Freeman – the prolific leg-break bowler – claimed 12 or extra wickets right here on 5 events. Later Kent spinners Doug Wright and Derek Underwood every did so as soon as.
If gradual bowlers may need loved the Crabble, the powers that be have been much less enthusiastic, and the pitch deteriorated within the Seventies. Crowds fell, too. The native council, who owned the sector, weren’t ready to spend rate-payers’ cash on enhancements. First-class cricket left; car-boot gross sales moved in.
Rugby union additionally overran Glamorgan’s authentic residence at Cardiff Arms Park. It may need been totally different. Buoyed by being joint-winners of the 1900 Minor Counties Championship, Glamorgan made a daring bid to host a Check the next yr.
Bramall Lane takes in a Roses conflict in 1937. It’s considered one of two grounds (together with the Oval) to have hosted an England soccer match, England cricket Check match and an FA Cup ultimate
An England XI together with Hutton (second left) and Wally Hammond (centre) tackle an Australia Companies staff at Bramall Lane in 1945
MCC have been impressed by the amenities, and the fitting to host the match grew to become a battle between Cardiff and Nottingham. The committee awarded it to Trent Bridge by a single vote.
Check standing may need preserved the bottom, although in rugby-mad South Wales maybe not. The pavilion was pleasant – turreted, half-timbered and with roofs surmounted by bulb-shaped domes. The choice to tug it down in 1934 to make means for the North Stand of the rugby stadium was an indication of issues to return.
The following pavilion was as unique as a multistorey automobile park and, with the nice darkish again of the brand new stand overhanging the outfield just like the shadow of doom, the overall evaluation of the Arms Park by visiting cricket journalists was ‘unprepossessing’.
Nonetheless, it had its moments. In 1935, Glamorgan hitter Cyril Sensible got here in at 10 for 5 in opposition to the visiting South Africans, and smashed a lightning century – together with a large six that introduced up his hundred and disappeared by way of the plate glass window of a lodge in Westgate Road.
A month later, Sensible grew to become the primary to belt 32 runs from a six-ball over, when he set concerning the Hampshire off-spinner Gerry Hill. Extra hostelry glass was shattered.
Tall blocks of flats have been erected on Westgate Road, including to the Arms Park cricket area’s sense of claustrophobia. In 1967, Glamorgan moved to Sophia Gardens, and for the following decade or so the Welsh nationwide rugby floor sat athwart the strip like a triumphant bully – till it too was flattened to make means for the Millennium Stadium.
In 2025, one other acquainted Welsh floor joined the legion of the fallen. They embrace Elm Avenue (Newark), Clarence Park (Weston-super-Mare), Tipton Highway (Dudley), Snibston Colliery Floor (Coalville), Dean Park (Bournemouth), Fartown (Huddersfield) – and now St Helen’s. It means Swansea turns into the most recent addition to the roll name of cities and cities to have misplaced first-class cricket.
On August 31, having hosted two one-day internationals and 418 first-class matches, it bade farewell to cricket, not with a bang however a whimper: Swansea 2nds misplaced to Pontardawe by six wickets, ending 152 years of cricket at St Helen’s. Welsh rugby union membership Ospreys will make it their residence, although they’ve existential issues of their very own.
The Dean Park Sports activities Floor within the Thirties, with Bournemouth station seen on the prime of the image
Alan Jones, who holds the report for probably the most first-class runs (36,049) with out enjoying in an official Check, hits out at Swansea’s St Helen’s floor for Glamorgan in 1979
No matter occurs within the 8,000-capacity floor, it’s unlikely something will match these superb 5 minutes precisely 57 years earlier, when Garry Sobers struck six sixes in an over off Malcolm Nash, utilizing a bat which, within the grainy black and white tv footage, seems so small he may need purchased it in a Mumbles toyshop, together with a bucket and spade.
Even now, in quiet moments within the streets across the floor, chances are you’ll suppose you may hear Nash’s anguished cry as he watches Roger Davis catch the fifth of Sobers’s blows, then fall throughout the boundary – although it’s in all probability solely the keening of a herring gull.
Harry Pearson has twice gained the MCC/Cricket Society E book of the 12 months, and bitterly laments the demise of Harrogate’s Tilcon Trophy.
This text is an extract from Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 2026, which is obtainable to order now in hardback, paperback and E book (The Shorter Wisden 2026)
