Castle Avenue cricket ground, also known as Clontarf Cricket Club ground, is a

cricket Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of eleven players on a field at the centre of which is a pitch with a wicket at each end, each comprising two bails balanced on three stumps. The batting side scores runs by striki ...

facility in the suburb of Clontarf,

Dublin Dublin (; , or ) is the capital and largest city of Republic of Ireland, Ireland. On a bay at the mouth of the River Liffey, it is in the Provinces of Ireland, province of Leinster, bordered on the south by the Dublin Mountains, a part of th ...

Ireland Ireland ( ; ga, Éire ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe, north-western Europe. It is separated from Great Britain to its east by the North Channel (Grea ...

. It is the primary of the two grounds of

Clontarf Cricket Club Clontarf Cricket Club is a cricket club in Dublin, Ireland, playing in Division 1 of the Leinster Senior League. Based at Clontarf Cricket Club Ground, the club also has playing facilities in the grounds of Mount Temple Comprehensive School ...

, the secondary being at

Mount Temple Comprehensive School Mount Temple Comprehensive School is a secondary school in Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland. The school operates under the patronage of the Church of Ireland Archbishop of Dublin, and has, as a primary objective, the provision of state-funded second-le ...

, and the lands on which it lies are also home to two rugby union pitches belonging to

Clontarf FC Clontarf Football Club is an Republic of Ireland, Irish rugby union club based in Clontarf, Dublin and playing, as of 2018, in Division 1A of the All-Ireland League (rugby union), All-Ireland League. History Having played firstly in a field a ...

. The ground is one of only three

One Day International A One Day International (ODI) is a form of limited overs cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of overs, currently 50, with the game lasting up to 9 hours. The Cricket World C ...

grounds on the island of Ireland.

Location and capacity

The ground lies on a lane off Castle Avenue in central Clontarf, near

Clontarf Castle Clontarf Castle ( ga, Caisleán Chluain Tarbh) is a much-modernised castle, dating to 1837, in Clontarf, Dublin, Ireland, an area famous as a key location of the Battle of Clontarf in 1014. There has been a castle on the site since 1172. In mod ...

, and have been home to Clontarf Cricket Club since 1896. The 50th anniversary of the first game played on the current cricket field was celebrated in 2008. It has a capacity of 3,200 spectators. The playing field's ends are named "Killester" and "City".

History

Clontarf Cricket Club began operations on a site on Vernon Avenue in 1876. They moved to a site near the end of Howth Road in 1892, which they started to share with rugby union side Clontarf Football Club. The two clubs moved to the site off Castle Avenue in 1896. Operations were suspended from 1914 to 1918, and during World War II, the site was used for allotments. Fully separate playing areas were set out from 1947, and the two clubs swapped fields in 1958, from which time the current playing areas date.

International cricket

Clontarf is one of three

(ODI) grounds in Ireland (the others being Stormont in

Belfast Belfast ( , ; from ga, Béal Feirste , meaning 'mouth of the sand-bank ford') is the capital and largest city of Northern Ireland, standing on the banks of the River Lagan on the east coast. It is the 12th-largest city in the United Kingdo ...

and

Malahide Malahide ( ; ) is an affluent coastal settlement in Fingal, County Dublin, Ireland, situated north of Dublin city. It has a village centre surrounded by suburban housing estates, with a population of over 17,000. Malahide Castle dates from th ...

in Dublin), hosting its first ODI match on 21 May 1999 as part of the

1999 Cricket World Cup The 1999 Cricket World Cup (officially known as ICC Cricket World Cup '99) was the seventh edition of the Cricket World Cup, organised by the International Cricket Council (ICC). It was hosted primarily by England, with Scotland, Ireland, Wales ...

when

Bangladesh Bangladesh (}, ), officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the eighth-most populous country in the world, with a population exceeding 165 million people in an area of . Bangladesh is among the mos ...

played the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

played their first ODI at that venue in July 2007 against the

as part of a quadrangular series. It was selected as a venue to host matches in the

2015 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier The 2015 ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, for the 2016 World Twenty20, was held from 6 to 26 July 2015. The tournament was hosted by both Ireland and Scotland. 51 matches were played among 14 nations, down from 72 matches among 16 nations previous ...

tournament. In May 2017, the venue hosted its first match between two Full Member teams when Bangladesh played New Zealand in the

2017 Ireland Tri-Nation Series The 2017 Ireland Tri-Nation Series was a One Day International cricket tournament that took place in Ireland in May 2017. It was a tri-nation series between Ireland, Bangladesh and New Zealand. The matches were in preparation for the 2017 ICC Cha ...

Other sports

There are also two

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

pitches within the complex, which is home to both cricket and rugby, with Clontarf FC, since 1896. The clubs swapped sides of the complex (fields) in 1958.

Records

International centuries

ODI Centuries

Eight ODI centuries have been scored at the venue.

International five-wicket hauls

Five-wicket hauls have been taken on the ground on four occasions, all of them in ODIs.

Notes

References

External links

*
Cricket Europe profile

Clontarf RFC profile

Clontarf C.C. website
Cricket grounds in the Republic of Ireland Clontarf FC Sports venues in Dublin (city) Sports venues completed in 1958 Cricket grounds in County Dublin 1999 Cricket World Cup stadiums {{Ireland-sports-venue-stub