From The Archive: Hampshire's Outgrounds

Words: Dave Allen

The roots of County cricket clubs, unlike the town and city-based football teams of the later 19^th century, reached back into the rural 18^th century. Counties covered large and often very diverse areas, so the teams expected to travel within – and sometimes across - their borders, taking cricket to their audience, especially in the pre-war days before the mass ownership of cars.

Hampshire County Cricket Club formed in 1863 and until 1884 their main ground was the Antelope in Southampton. In 1885, they moved a short distance to Northlands Road, playing their final game there in 2000, before moving to the Rose/The Ageas Bowl. In this century, they have played just four first-class matches away from their main ground, three at Basingstoke from 2008-2010 and one on the Isle of Wight in 2019. But from 1895, when they entered the County Championship, until 2000 Hampshire played also on a number of grounds, albeit mostly along fifty miles of the south coast in the three major urban centres of Bournemouth, Portsmouth and Southampton.

Since Southampton was central and housed all the administration it was the main ground, and owned by the club. But to call the other two ‘outgrounds’ is slightly misleading – particularly in the case of Bournemouth, since Hampshire paid for much of the running of the ground without ever owning it. The decision to leave Bournemouth in 1992 was because the costs of maintaining two grounds was becoming impossible, especially with the search for a new home underway.

At Portsmouth, Hampshire were always the tenants of the Services, principally the Royal Navy, but as with Bournemouth they played many matches there – especially in the mid-20^th century before the advent of one-day matches and the reduction in Championship fixtures. Overall, Hampshire played 567 first-class matches at Northlands Road; 338 at Bournemouth and 315 in Portsmouth. That is a total of 1,220 matches at those three venues, whereas up to 2000, the club played just 59 first-class matches elsewhere, plus those four in this century. Of those 63 other games, 46 were played at Basingstoke and 10 at three different venues on the Isle of Wight.

In addition to Basingstoke, Hampshire have tried other matches away from the coast, starting in 1875 with two first-class (pre-Championship) games on different Winchester grounds. In July of that year they lost by an innings to Sussex on the Green Jackets Ground; for Hampshire RG Hargreaves took three wickets and top-scored with 31. A month later Hampshire played Kent in their only match on the Winchester College ground known as Ridding Field, where Kent won by an innings and 217 runs having dismissed Hampshire for 34 and 82. Hampshire’s John Galpin, a fast bowler from Gosport, took 6-68.

Of the matches to the north of the county, only Basingstoke has hosted what we now call ‘white-ball’ cricket, all in the old Sunday League. Most one-day matches have been played at headquarters, although Hampshire’s first knock-out cup game in 1963 was at Bournemouth, and Portsmouth also held a few. Those two grounds have also hosted occasional tourist and university matches, although most tourist matches have been played at Southampton. One exception came in 1904 when Hampshire played their only first-class match at Alton against the touring South Africans. The visitors were not accorded a Test that year, but they beat Hampshire by an innings, despite a good all-round performance by CB Llewellyn, Hampshire’s South African who played some matches for the tourists that year and in 15 Tests for his country.

In the following year, Hampshire played the first of five first-class matches at Aldershot – like Portsmouth, a services ground. In 1905 and 1906 they suffered heavy defeats to Surrey, but in 1910, CB Llewellyn had match figures of 13-106 as Hampshire beat Somerset by an innings. That was the end of their Championship matches on the ground, but during one week in 1948 they drew with Cambridge University and beat the Combined Services, matches notable for the first-class debuts of future Champions Derek Shackleton and Jimmy Gray. Five first-class matches were played on the ground by services sides, including the match v Hampshire.

Hampshire first visited Basingstoke in 1906, playing Warwickshire. Eight years later they returned to meet Derbyshire but then the war interrupted first-class cricket and they did not return until 1935 v Surrey, then 1936 v Nottinghamshire, 1937 v Cambridge University and Leicestershire, and 1938 v Worcestershire. After the next war, Basingstoke expanded from the small rural town of John Arlott’s childhood and its population is now above 150,000, about 30,000 more than Winchester. By contrast the densely populated south coast that stretches about 25 miles from Portsmouth to Southampton houses more than 600,000 people - approximately half the total population of the county.

Nonetheless the expansion of Basingstoke encouraged Hampshire to return; briefly in 1951 v Oxford University, then from 1966 v Surrey, they played one Championship match there each year until 2000. They returned for three seasons, 2008-2010. In that space from the mid-1950s to 1962, Hampshire played one match each year over seven seasons at the new JS White’s ground at Cowes, Isle of Wight. This too was a return as they had played two Championship matches across the Solent at Newport’s Victoria Recreation Ground immediately before the war in1938 & 1939. They returned with some success of course in 2019 at another ground, Newclose, between Cowes and Newport, although their finest match was surely the improbable victory over Essex, inspired by captain Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie, in 1961.

While Bournemouth and Portsmouth were strictly ‘outgrounds’ their extensive use over more than a century warrants a separate account, but we might finish with one more significant outground for the county, well north of Hampshire. Darley Dale, a town of 6,00 inhabitants, housed a single Sunday League match in 1975 when Richard Gilliat’s Hampshire were on BBC television, beating Derbyshire by 70 runs to win their first one-day trophy.

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