The Grove, Gore Court is a sports ground in

Sittingbourne Sittingbourne is an industrial town in Kent, south-east England, from Canterbury and from London, beside the Roman Watling Street, an ancient British trackway used by the Romans and the Anglo-Saxons and next to the Swale, a strip of sea separa ...

Kent Kent is a county in South East England and one of the home counties. It borders Greater London to the north-west, Surrey to the west and East Sussex to the south-west, and Essex to the north across the estuary of the River Thames; it faces ...

. It is used for

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 ...

and

hockey Hockey is a term used to denote a family of various types of both summer and winter team sports which originated on either an outdoor field, sheet of ice, or dry floor such as in a gymnasium. While these sports vary in specific rules, numbers o ...

by Gore Court. The ground is to the west of the centre of Sittingbourne, along the main A2 London road.

History

The first recorded cricket match on the ground was in 1860, when the Gentlemen of Kent played the Gentlemen of Berkshire.Other matches played on The Grove, Sittingbourne
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-12-17. The

Kent County Cricket Club Kent County Cricket Club is one of the eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Kent. A club representing the county was first founded in 1842 but Ke ...

Second XI first used the ground in the 1930

Minor Counties Championship The NCCA 3 Day Championship (previously the Minor Counties Cricket Championship) is a season-long competition in England and Wales that is contested by the members of the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), the so-called national cou ...

against

Wiltshire Wiltshire (; abbreviated Wilts) is a historic and ceremonial county in South West England with an area of . It is landlocked and borders the counties of Dorset to the southwest, Somerset to the west, Hampshire to the southeast, Gloucestershire ...

. From 1930 to 1997, the ground held a combined total of 38 Second XI fixtures for the Kent Second XI in the Minor Counties Championship,

Second XI Championship The Second XI Championship is a season-long cricket competition in England that is competed for by the reserve teams of those county cricket clubs that have first-class status. The competition started in 1959 and has been contested annually ever ...

and Second XI Trophy.Minor Counties Championship Matches played on The Grove, Sittingbourne
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-12-17.
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-12-17. In the

1973 Women's Cricket World Cup The 1973 Women's Cricket World Cup was the inaugural Women's Cricket World Cup, held in England between 20 June and 28 July 1973. It was the first tournament of its kind, held two years before the first limited overs World Cup for men in 1975. T ...

, the ground held a single match between Young England women and Jamaica women.Women's One-Day International Matches played on The Grove, Sittingbourne
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-12-17. The ground is the home venue of Gore Court Cricket Club who play in the

Kent Cricket League The Kent Cricket League is the top level of competition for recreational club cricket in Kent, England. The league was founded in 1970 and the first season of play was 1971. The twelve founding clubs were Ashford, Aylesford Paper Mills, Dart ...

and have used the ground since 1929.The Grove, Sittingbourne
CricketArchive. Retrieved 2017-12-17. The club's previous ground was on Bell Road in the centre of the town.Club history
Gore Court Hockey Club. Retrieved 2017-12-17. Gore Court Hockey Club has shared the ground since 1930 and formally merged with the cricket club after the

Second World War World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...

. The ground was used for Hockey County Championship matches between 1967 and the early 1980s.

Jason Lee Jason Lee may refer to: Entertainment *Jason Lee (actor) (born 1970), American film and TV actor and former professional skateboarder *Jason Scott Lee (born 1966), Asian American film actor * Jaxon Lee (Jason Christopher Lee, born 1968), American v ...

, who went on to coach the England and Great Britain men's teams and the England women's team, played for the club and represented Great Britain at the 1992 and 1996 Olympic Games. The ground was also used for staging tennis tournaments. The Sittingbourne and Gore Court Archery & Lawn Tennis Club held annual tennis tournament called the Gore Court Championships there from 1877 to 1926."TENNIS AT FOLKESTONE. The 29th Annual championship tournament of the Gore Court Lawn Tennis Club, Sittingbourne. which, has extended over two days, was concluded on Saturday". Folkestone Express, Sandgate, Shorncliffe & Hythe Advertiser. Folkstone, Kent, England. 29 August 1906. p. 3.

References

External links

Gore Court
on

Cricinfo ESPN cricinfo (formerly known as Cricinfo or CricInfo) is a sports news website exclusively for the game of cricket. The site features news, articles, live coverage of cricket matches (including liveblogs and scorecards), and ''StatsGuru'', a d ...

Cricket grounds in Kent Sports venues completed in 1860 Sport in Sittingbourne {{England-cricket-ground-stub