The Grockle
Formally Croydon Seagull
No doubt i'm opening myself up for a right piss taking here. I don't know anything about cricket but could you play a match in a football ground or would it be too small?
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Cricket in a football ground?
- Thread starter The Grockle
- Start date
Southover Street Seagull
Well-known member
You can but you would need one stand missing from the traditional four sides. Cricket was played at Bramall Lane and The County Ground (Northampton).
Paxton Dazo
Up The Spurs.
- Mar 11, 2007
- 9,719
Yeah, Yorkshire CCC used to play their home games at Bramall Lane.
The Grockle
Formally Croydon Seagull
- Thread starter
- #4
i thought the width might be the issue. I was just thinking about what Falmer could be used for during the summer break.
Publius Ovidius
Well-known member
Stamford Bridge hosted a one day 20/20 type game many years ago ( graham gooch scored many 6's)
I think they tried to make it work, but no-one took it up.
Who knows with 20/20, and them bringing in the boundaries.....
I think they tried to make it work, but no-one took it up.
Who knows with 20/20, and them bringing in the boundaries.....
Alex Alex Dawson oo! oo!
Primary data is fact
Wasn't a limited overs game played at the Goldstone back in the 80s/90s with Imran et al?
The Grockle
Formally Croydon Seagull
- Thread starter
- #7
I know its been said that it can and probably will be used for music events, i just thought it would be good if it could be used for other sports too as well as bringing in much need revenue it would benefit a wider spectrum of sports fans.
- Aug 8, 2005
- 26,552
I was thinking the same. Fairly sure Imran Khan era? or perhaps a little later??
Peter Grummit
Well-known member
It was played at WITHDEAN around about 1980 and Imran whacked a load of 6sover the short boundary. Floodlit cricket ahead of its time.
PG
ATFC Seagull
Aberystwyth Town FC
Kinda, but I think the Americans got there first with the baseball/American footy stadiums.
Cheshire Cat
The most curious thing..
Cricinfo - Lighting up Stamford Bridge
1980
Lighting up Stamford Bridge
Martin Williamson
September 2, 2006
Cricket under lights at Stamford Bridge © The Cricketer
For all the disruption Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket caused in the late 1970s, the innovations it introduced changed the game forever. Packer successfully used drop-in pitches, was the first to put players in coloured kits, the first to use white balls, and the first to play matches under floodlights. As the administrators in England fumed, they could not help but be struck by the numbers of people wanting to watch day-night games.
That the idea would be tried in England was a given. The problem was that the only grounds with floodlights were almost all those used for football. There had been a trial game in 1952 at Highbury (Arsenal's home) but that was a benefit match and played in a very light-hearted way.
But in June 1980, Surrey took the bull by the horns and, backed by the Daily Mirror, staged a match under the floodlights at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge on August 24 and roped in the touring West Indies side to provide the opposition. Packer had looked at and approved the venue a year earlier when he had been scouting for possible grounds to host WSC floodlit games, and it was agreed to be an ideal location.
One problem was obvious from the off. A football ground is longer and narrower than anything used for cricket, and so even modest hits square of the wicket were an almost guaranteed six. Officials toyed with the idea of reducing a side-on hit into the stands to two runs, but eventually decided not to tinker and to play to the laws as they stood.
Micky Stewart, at the time Surrey's manager, was keen to stress that the match was more than a gimmick. "This is will be a highly competitive match and not just a staged event," he explained a month before the game.
Harry Brind, the groundsman at The Oval who coincidently had held in the same post at Stamford Bridge, was brought in to supervise the laying of a drop-in wicket. But in the end that proved too problematic and an artificial pitch was laid, and Brind admitted his contribution was limited to cutting the grass under the mat. Essex lent their mobile scorebox as Chelsea's new electronic scoreboard was completely unable to cope with the complexities of cricket scores.
Unfortunately for Surrey, they were unable to come to their own party and show off the chocolate brown kit they had had made specially for the occasion. Rain meant their Gillette Cup semi-final against Yorkshire at The Oval spilled over into a second day, and so Essex replaced them.
The game got underway at 5.30pm and West Indies made a cautious start, none more so than Viv Richards who took 15 minutes to get off the mark. Then he found his range and smashed 53 in the next 18 minutes, including 20 off four successive balls from David Acfield. Much as he had done a year earlier in the World Cup final, Collis King was even more brutal, breaking one spectator's umbrella with a flat six on his way to 56, and then Faoud Bacchus joined in with six sixes in his 87 not out. In all, there were 19 sixes and in Wisden Cricket Monthly David Frith noted that "the crowd was beside itself with joy ... after the tempo of the Test matches, this was like Stephane Grappelli in pursuit of a funeral dirge."
Set a target of 258 at 6.45 an over, Essex also started slowly, and when Neil Smith was out in the fourth over they had made only 14. Then Graham Gooch, who had earlier taken three wickets, and Ken McEwan threw caution to the wind and runs came in a rush. Gooch in particular was in an unforgiving mood, bludgeoning ten sixes including three in a row off Richards and hitting Malcolm Marshall out of the ground. McEwan was not far behind, although Gooch had more of the strike.
It was still relatively light-hearted, and when Gooch was struck on the foot by a yorker, Ray East, the perennial joker, rushed on with a bucket and pretended to re-chalk his toe-cap.
At 8.25pm the rain, which had been threatening since the afternoon, started and the players returned to their dug outs (something to re-appear in Twenty20 cricket 23 years later). They returned after ten minutes, allowing Gooch to complete a 77-minute hundred by hammering a Colin Croft full-toss for six. Soon after , the rain returned with interest and the game was abandoned. Essex won by virtue of having a faster scoring-rate (Duckworth/Lewis was almost two decades away) and Gooch named Man of the Match.
Despite the weather, the event was deemed a success. The official attendance was 11,073, although with tickets starting at £2, most of the £50,000 income came from sponsorship and 40 corporate boxes. Surrey's share, as organisers, came to around 15,000 pounds.
In the weeks that followed, Surrey expressed a desire to play a similar game against the Australians in 1981 and also floated the idea of a county competition under lights. "Many of the crowd saw the enjoyment the crowd got from the match and they must have been impressed," explained Bernie Coleman, a member of the county's committee.
On September 17, Bristol's Ashton Gate staged a floodlit match between a World XI and a Rest of the World XI in front of 7925 spectators and Bristol City FC, who made a £3000 profit, followed up with a request to the Test & County Cricket Board to stage a game featuring the Australians in 1981.
At one stage Ian Botham hit five balls, half-a-dozen of which had been specially flown in from Australia, right out of the ground, forcing organisers to send an SOS to nearby Bristol University asking for them to send over all available hockey balls. In The Times, Alan Gibson railed against a "repellent spectacle". He added: "In ten years time we shall have the pylons up at Lord's at the riots that go with them."
The following summer Lambert & Butler sponsored a county competition played at several football grounds, but it was a commercial failure and public interest was low. It was to be more than a decade before the idea of playing competitive cricket under lights was seriously raised again.
Two days after the game at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea fought out a dull 2-2 draw with Wrexham. As the game drew to a close the bored crowd chanted "We want cricket"!
(Stamford Bridge) West Indies 257 for 9 in 40 overs (Bacchus 87*, King 56, Richards 53, Lever 4-41) v Essex 192 for 1 in 28 overs (Gooch 111*, McEwan 67*) - no result
(Ashton Gate) World XI 214 in 37.2 overs (Botham 84, Gooch 68, Doshi 6-48) lost to Rest of the World 215 for 2 (Gavaskar 67, Sadiq Mohammad 64) by eight wickets
Bibliography
Wisden Cricketer Monthly 1980
The Cricketer 1980
Martin Williamson is managing editor of Cricinfo
© Cricinfo
1980
Lighting up Stamford Bridge
Martin Williamson
September 2, 2006
Cricket under lights at Stamford Bridge © The Cricketer
For all the disruption Kerry Packer's World Series Cricket caused in the late 1970s, the innovations it introduced changed the game forever. Packer successfully used drop-in pitches, was the first to put players in coloured kits, the first to use white balls, and the first to play matches under floodlights. As the administrators in England fumed, they could not help but be struck by the numbers of people wanting to watch day-night games.
That the idea would be tried in England was a given. The problem was that the only grounds with floodlights were almost all those used for football. There had been a trial game in 1952 at Highbury (Arsenal's home) but that was a benefit match and played in a very light-hearted way.
But in June 1980, Surrey took the bull by the horns and, backed by the Daily Mirror, staged a match under the floodlights at Chelsea's Stamford Bridge on August 24 and roped in the touring West Indies side to provide the opposition. Packer had looked at and approved the venue a year earlier when he had been scouting for possible grounds to host WSC floodlit games, and it was agreed to be an ideal location.
One problem was obvious from the off. A football ground is longer and narrower than anything used for cricket, and so even modest hits square of the wicket were an almost guaranteed six. Officials toyed with the idea of reducing a side-on hit into the stands to two runs, but eventually decided not to tinker and to play to the laws as they stood.
Micky Stewart, at the time Surrey's manager, was keen to stress that the match was more than a gimmick. "This is will be a highly competitive match and not just a staged event," he explained a month before the game.
Harry Brind, the groundsman at The Oval who coincidently had held in the same post at Stamford Bridge, was brought in to supervise the laying of a drop-in wicket. But in the end that proved too problematic and an artificial pitch was laid, and Brind admitted his contribution was limited to cutting the grass under the mat. Essex lent their mobile scorebox as Chelsea's new electronic scoreboard was completely unable to cope with the complexities of cricket scores.
Unfortunately for Surrey, they were unable to come to their own party and show off the chocolate brown kit they had had made specially for the occasion. Rain meant their Gillette Cup semi-final against Yorkshire at The Oval spilled over into a second day, and so Essex replaced them.
The game got underway at 5.30pm and West Indies made a cautious start, none more so than Viv Richards who took 15 minutes to get off the mark. Then he found his range and smashed 53 in the next 18 minutes, including 20 off four successive balls from David Acfield. Much as he had done a year earlier in the World Cup final, Collis King was even more brutal, breaking one spectator's umbrella with a flat six on his way to 56, and then Faoud Bacchus joined in with six sixes in his 87 not out. In all, there were 19 sixes and in Wisden Cricket Monthly David Frith noted that "the crowd was beside itself with joy ... after the tempo of the Test matches, this was like Stephane Grappelli in pursuit of a funeral dirge."
Set a target of 258 at 6.45 an over, Essex also started slowly, and when Neil Smith was out in the fourth over they had made only 14. Then Graham Gooch, who had earlier taken three wickets, and Ken McEwan threw caution to the wind and runs came in a rush. Gooch in particular was in an unforgiving mood, bludgeoning ten sixes including three in a row off Richards and hitting Malcolm Marshall out of the ground. McEwan was not far behind, although Gooch had more of the strike.
It was still relatively light-hearted, and when Gooch was struck on the foot by a yorker, Ray East, the perennial joker, rushed on with a bucket and pretended to re-chalk his toe-cap.
At 8.25pm the rain, which had been threatening since the afternoon, started and the players returned to their dug outs (something to re-appear in Twenty20 cricket 23 years later). They returned after ten minutes, allowing Gooch to complete a 77-minute hundred by hammering a Colin Croft full-toss for six. Soon after , the rain returned with interest and the game was abandoned. Essex won by virtue of having a faster scoring-rate (Duckworth/Lewis was almost two decades away) and Gooch named Man of the Match.
Despite the weather, the event was deemed a success. The official attendance was 11,073, although with tickets starting at £2, most of the £50,000 income came from sponsorship and 40 corporate boxes. Surrey's share, as organisers, came to around 15,000 pounds.
In the weeks that followed, Surrey expressed a desire to play a similar game against the Australians in 1981 and also floated the idea of a county competition under lights. "Many of the crowd saw the enjoyment the crowd got from the match and they must have been impressed," explained Bernie Coleman, a member of the county's committee.
On September 17, Bristol's Ashton Gate staged a floodlit match between a World XI and a Rest of the World XI in front of 7925 spectators and Bristol City FC, who made a £3000 profit, followed up with a request to the Test & County Cricket Board to stage a game featuring the Australians in 1981.
At one stage Ian Botham hit five balls, half-a-dozen of which had been specially flown in from Australia, right out of the ground, forcing organisers to send an SOS to nearby Bristol University asking for them to send over all available hockey balls. In The Times, Alan Gibson railed against a "repellent spectacle". He added: "In ten years time we shall have the pylons up at Lord's at the riots that go with them."
The following summer Lambert & Butler sponsored a county competition played at several football grounds, but it was a commercial failure and public interest was low. It was to be more than a decade before the idea of playing competitive cricket under lights was seriously raised again.
Two days after the game at Stamford Bridge, Chelsea fought out a dull 2-2 draw with Wrexham. As the game drew to a close the bored crowd chanted "We want cricket"!
(Stamford Bridge) West Indies 257 for 9 in 40 overs (Bacchus 87*, King 56, Richards 53, Lever 4-41) v Essex 192 for 1 in 28 overs (Gooch 111*, McEwan 67*) - no result
(Ashton Gate) World XI 214 in 37.2 overs (Botham 84, Gooch 68, Doshi 6-48) lost to Rest of the World 215 for 2 (Gavaskar 67, Sadiq Mohammad 64) by eight wickets
Bibliography
Wisden Cricketer Monthly 1980
The Cricketer 1980
Martin Williamson is managing editor of Cricinfo
© Cricinfo
murraymints4brighton
Well-known member
you could play one at withdean if you extended artificial turf or something over the running track it would be perfect.
AlbionKebabs
Member
I think there was a game at the Millenium Stadium not so long ago. You got a different score for whichever terrace you smacked it into
Juan Albion
Chicken Sniffer 3rd Class
Surely that was a case of football being played on a cricket pitch? That was always my impression.
Djmiles
Barndoor Holroyd
I remember watching that, must have been a good 5 years ago at least.
Jamon Jamon
********** ****
Sussex played Surrey in a 25 over floodlit match at The Goldstone on 7th September 1981. Sussex won by 3 wickets with Imran Khan hitting dozens of white cricket balls all around the ground in his 123 not out. The match attracted a very poor attendence.
.
.
Nottseagull
Well-known member
I've never heard that and think it unlikely, but if true it could account for why we played at the County Ground in Hove before moving to the GG.
- Aug 8, 2005
- 26,552
Thank f*** for that. I was sure my memory was not deceiving me.