List of Hampshire County Cricket Club grounds

Hampshire County Cricket Club was established in August 1863. Since then, Hampshire has played first-class, List A one-day, and Twenty20 matches at various venues across what is considered the historic extent of Hampshire. Unlike most professional sports in which a team usually has a single fixed home ground, county cricket clubs have traditionally used different home grounds in various towns and cities for home matches, although the use of minor "outgrounds" has diminished since the 1980s. Particularly in the early days of county cricket where personal transportation was a rare commodity, it was an expectation that cricket would have to be taken to the large and diverse areas a county would geographically cover. The Antelope Ground hosted their inaugural home first-class match in 1864, whilst the County Ground has hosted the most home matches in both first-class and one-day cricket, when it was used as Hampshire's headquarters between 1885 and 2000. Hampshire's current headquarters, since 2001, has been at the Rose Bowl. As of 2024, Hampshire have played home fixtures at 14 venues.

The Rose Bowl (pictured) has been Hampshire's main home ground since 2001.

History

Headquarters

United Services Recreation Ground

Officers Club Services Ground

Rose Bowl/Nursery Ground

J. Samuel White's Ground

Victoria Recreation Ground

May's Bounty

Municipal Ground

Dean Park

County Ground

Winchester College Ground

Green Jackets Ground

Antelope Ground

Newclose

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Locations of grounds used by Hampshire.

Hampshire's inaugural home first-class match came against Sussex at the Antelope Ground in Southampton in 1864, a ground which had been used by various ad-hoc Hampshire representative sides since 1842. The Antelope Ground was Hampshire's first headquarters. Hampshire left the Antelope Ground in 1885, moving to their new headquarters at the County Ground in Southampton, after a lease was successfully acquired by the cricketer James Fellowes, which began an association at the County Ground which would last for 115 years. During Hampshire's tenure of the County Ground, they played 565 first-class and 209 one-day matches there. Necessitated by a need to move from the cramped conditions of the County Ground and develop a headquarters which could attract international cricket, Hampshire moved to the purpose-built Rose Bowl in the Southampton suburb of West End ahead of the 2001 season, which remains their main home venue. In addition to hosting Hampshire matches, the Rose Bowl has played host to Test, One Day International, and Twenty20 International matches for England.

Outgrounds

Hampshire have used several "outgrounds" as venues for home matches. Beginning in 1875, Hampshire played two matches in Winchester at the Green Jackets Ground and Winchester College. In 1888, Hampshire began playing first-class matches in Portsmouth at the United Services Recreation Ground, which was used by the officers and ranks of services teams based in the city. Hampshire would use the United Services Recreation Ground as an outground for over a century, playing 316 first-class and 54 one-day matches there, before matches hosted in Portsmouth were moved to the Rose Bowl upon its completion. In 1897, Hampshire began playing at Dean Park Cricket Ground in Bournemouth. With the early matches played there proving to be financially successful, the ground was afforded two Hampshire home matches per season starting in 1899, which formed part of the matches played there during the Bournemouth Cricket Week. Following changes to county borders in 1972 that transferred Bournemouth from Hampshire to Dorset, Hampshire's use of the ground diminished and it last played host to a Hampshire home fixture in 1992. During Hampshire's use of Dean Park, they played 336 first-class and 68 one-day matches there.

Shortly after the turn of the twentieth century, Hampshire played one first-class match in Alton at the Municipal Ground against the touring South Africans in 1904. The following year, they played at the Officers Club Services Ground in Aldershot for the first time, which is also the home ground of the British Army cricket team; they would play five first-class matches there up to 1948. In 1906, Hampshire played at May's Bounty in Basingstoke for the first time. They played intermittently at May's Bounty until 2010, playing 46 first-class and 30 one-day matches there. Hampshire played on the Isle of Wight, which had become its own administrative county separate from Hampshire in 1890, for the first time in 1938 at the Victoria Recreation Ground in Newport, but played there for only two seasons before the Second World War. They later returned to the island in 1956, playing annually at the newly constructed J Samuel White's Ground in Cowes until 1962. Half a century would pass before Hampshire would play matches at a new outground. This would come in 2013, when the Nursery Ground, located adjacent to the Rose Bowl, hosted a first-class MCC Universities Match against Loughborough MCCU. In 2019, with the Rose Bowl hosting matches in the World Cup, Hampshire returned to the Isle of Wight to play at the Newclose County Cricket Ground near Newport; since 2019, one first-class and two one-day matches have been played there.

Grounds

As of 2024, Hampshire have played 1,494 first-class matches at fourteen home grounds, and 509 List A matches at six home grounds. They have also played 125 Twenty20 matches, all of which have been played at the Rose Bowl. The twelve grounds that Hampshire have used for home matches are listed below, with statistics complete through to the end of the 2024 season. Note: Only matches which involve Hampshire as the home team are recorded, while matches which were abandoned without a toss or a ball being bowled are excluded from the count.

Grounds

Name	Location	First-class			List A			Twenty20
		First	Last	Matches	First	Last	Matches	First	Last	Matches
Antelope Ground	Southampton	7 July 1864 v Sussex	7 August 1884 v Somerset	27	–	–	0	–	–	0
Green Jackets Ground	Winchester	only match: 1 July 1875 v Sussex	–	1	–	–	0	–	–	0
Winchester College Ground	Winchester	only match: 19 August 1875 v Kent	–	1	–	–	0	–	–	0
United Services Recreation Ground	Portsmouth	28 August 1882 v Sussex	19 July 2000 v Kent	316	22 May 1965 v Kent	23 July 2000 v Middlesex	54	–	–	0
County Ground	Southampton	15 June 1885 v Marylebone Cricket Club	13 September 2000 v Yorkshire	565	1 May 1965 v Norfolk	17 September 2000 v Nottinghamshire	207	–	–	0
Dean Park	Bournemouth	1 July 1897 v Gentlemen of Philadelphia	18 August 1992 v Middlesex	336	22 May 1963 v Derbyshire	16 August 1992 v Northamptonshire	68	–	–	0
Municipal Ground	Alton	only match: 7 July 1904 v South Africans	–	1	–	–	0	–	–	0
Officers Club Services Ground	Aldershot	25 May 1905 v Surrey	16 June 1948 v Combined Services	5	–	–	0	–	–	0
May's Bounty	Basingstoke	21 May 1906 v Warwickshire	3 August 2010 v Durham	46	29 April 1967 v Lincolnshire	18 June 2000 v Durham	30	–	–	0
Victoria Recreation Ground	Newport	20 August 1938 v Northamptonshire	24 June 1939 v Middlesex	2	–	–	0	–	–	0
J Samuel White's Ground	Cowes	26 May 1956 v Worcestershire	26 May 1962 v Worcestershire	7	–	–	0	–	–	0
Rose Bowl	West End	9 May 2001 v Worcestershire	still in use	185	4 May 2001 v Surrey	still in use	148	13 June 2003 v Sussex	still in use	125
Nursery Ground	West End	only match: 17 April 2013 v Loughborough MCCU	–	1	–	–	0	–	–	0
Newclose County Cricket Ground	Newport	only match: 20 May 2019 v Nottinghamshire	–	1	9 August 2022 v Northamptonshire	22 August 2023 v Kent	2	–	–	0

References

Works cited

• Chevallier, Hugh (2015). "England v Sri Lanka". In Berry, Scyld; Booth, Lawrence (eds.). The Shorter Wisden 2011–2015. London: Bloomsbury Publishing. ISBN 9781472927330.
• Cricket Grounds of Hampshire. Nottingham: ACS. 1988. OCLC 20758890.