The Essex County Ground (ECG) 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 ...

venue in Chelmsford, Essex, England. It has been used by

Essex County Cricket Club Essex County Cricket Club is one of eighteen first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Essex. Founded in 1876, the club had minor county status until 1894 when ...

for first-class cricket since 1925 and

List A List A cricket is a classification of the limited-overs (one-day) form of the sport of cricket, with games lasting up to eight hours. List A cricket includes One Day International (ODI) matches and various domestic competitions in which the numbe ...

matches since 1969, and has been the county's official home ground since 1967. The ground has a capacity of 6,500, mostly in single-tier seating with a single double-tiered stand. Its pavilion was completed in the 1970s.

History

Essex's first match at the ground took place in June 1925 against Oxford University. and their first County Championship game at Chelmsford was against Somerset in 1926. When the club left its headquarters at

Leyton Cricket Ground Leyton Cricket Ground (formerly known as the County Ground or the Lyttelton Ground) is a cricket ground in Leyton, London. The ground was the headquarters and main home match venue of Essex County Cricket Club from 1886 until 1933, and was als ...

at the end of the 1933 season they began a period of playing games at various venues around the county, with a week allocated to each. Chelmsford was given two weeks a season but poor attendances led to Essex ceasing to play at the ground after 1956. In 1966 the club purchased the Chelmsford ground for £15,000, with some financial assistance from Warwickshire's Supporters Association, and the ground became Essex's headquarters with home matches returning there from the 1967 season. The pavilion was opened during the 1970 season and the permanent scoreboard at the ground was constructed in 1981.

Domestic cricket

Chelmsford is a small ground, and is notoriously difficult to defend a total at in limited overs cricket, demonstrated by the fact that no side has ever defended a score of under 170 in T20 cricket here. Former Essex and England batsman Graham Gooch scored most of his first-class runs there. Graham Napier scored 152 off 58 balls (16 sixes and 10 fours) in a Twenty20 match v

Sussex Sussex (), from the Old English (), is a historic county in South East England that was formerly an independent medieval Anglo-Saxon kingdom. It is bounded to the west by Hampshire, north by Surrey, northeast by Kent, south by the English ...

at the ground. The success of Essex County Cricket Club in the shorter versions of the game between 2005 and 2008 led to the attraction of many new fans. Eventually the ground was regularly selling out in Twenty20 and Friends Provident Trophy games. The Ford Motor Company had naming rights for the ground for between 2005 and 2013. From 2017 to 2019 the naming rights to the stadium have been bought by Cloudfm and therefore the ground will be known as the Cloudfm County Ground. The large amount of passionate support Essex receive at this ground has led to it being popularly referred to as 'Fortress Chelmsford'.

International cricket

, the venue has hosted three men's

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 ...

(ODI) matches. The first ODI was played between

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and India during the

1983 Cricket World Cup The 1983 Cricket World Cup (officially the Prudential Cup '83) was the 3rd edition of the Cricket World Cup tournament. It was held from 9 to 25 June 1983 in England and Wales and was won by India. Eight countries participated in the event. En ...

and the last ODI match was played between South Africa and Zimbabwe during 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 ...

Ground redevelopment since 2010

New development to the ground include the building of new apartment blocks, the construction of a new cricket school, public square and an access bridge from the Chelmsford town centre side of the ground. In 2019 the ground's floodlights were replaced by larger, square floodlights.

References

Sources