Tunstall Road, also known as Victoria and Knypersley Social Welfare Centre, 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 ...

ground in Knypersley,

Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshire to the northwest, Derbyshire and Leicestershire to the east, Warwickshire to the southeast, the West Midlands Cou ...

. The ground is located along the Tunstall Road, which itself forms part of the A527 Road. It has played host to

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 for

Derbyshire County Cricket Club Derbyshire 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 Derbyshire. Its limited overs team is called the Derbyshire Falcons ...

, in addition to playing host to

Staffordshire County Cricket Club Staffordshire County Cricket Club is one of twenty national county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales. It represents the historic county of Staffordshire. The team is currently a member of the National Counties C ...

minor counties cricket The National Counties, known as the Minor Counties before 2020, are the cricketing counties of England and Wales that do not have first-class status. The game is administered by the National Counties Cricket Association (NCCA), which comes unde ...

History

The ground was established in 1870 as the home ground of Knypersley Cricket Club.

first played

there in the 1946

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 ...

, playing once a year there until 1955. After playing there in 1960, Staffordshire returned to the ground in 1976 and played one match per season there until 1987.

Derbyshire Derbyshire ( ) is a ceremonial county in the East Midlands, England. It includes much of the Peak District National Park, the southern end of the Pennine range of hills and part of the National Forest. It borders Greater Manchester to the nor ...

first used Tunstall Road as an outground in 1985, playing a List A one-day match there against

Worcestershire Worcestershire ( , ; written abbreviation: Worcs) is a county in the West Midlands of England. The area that is now Worcestershire was absorbed into the unified Kingdom of England in 927, at which time it was constituted as a county (see His ...

in the John Player Special League. Derbyshire played two further one-day matches there, in 1988 against Worcestershire and 1990 against

Leicestershire Leicestershire ( ; postal abbreviation Leics.) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in the East Midlands, England. The county borders Nottinghamshire to the north, Lincolnshire to the north-east, Rutland to the east, Northamptonshire t ...

. Derbyshire's use of the ground was part of an agreement with

Staffordshire County Council Staffordshire County Council is the top-tier local authority for the non-metropolitan county of Staffordshire Staffordshire (; postal abbreviation Staffs.) is a landlocked county in the West Midlands region of England. It borders Cheshir ...

to stage one Sunday match in Staffordshire per year, alternating between three venues. The other two venues were at Cheadle and

Leek The leek is a vegetable, a cultivar of ''Allium ampeloprasum'', the broadleaf wild leek ( syn. ''Allium porrum''). The edible part of the plant is a bundle of leaf sheaths that is sometimes erroneously called a stem or stalk. The genus ''Alli ...

. Staffordshire continue to use the ground for minor counties fixtures, having also played

MCCA Knockout Trophy The National Counties Cricket Association Knockout Cup was started in 1983 as a knockout one-day competition for the National Counties in English cricket. At first it was known as the ''English Industrial Estates Cup'', before being called the ...

and National Counties T20 fixtures at the ground. Tunstall Road has also played host to Staffordshire Women in one-day and Twenty20 matches. The

pavilion In architecture, ''pavilion'' has several meanings: * It may be a subsidiary building that is either positioned separately or as an attachment to a main building. Often it is associated with pleasure. In palaces and traditional mansions of Asia ...

at the ground is a black and white timber structure which stands above the ground on a high bank. The ground was formerly shared with Biddulph Victoria F.C., until they folded at the end of the 2010–11 season and were evicted from the ground. Other structures at the ground include a

scoreboard A scoreboard is a large board for publicly displaying the score in a game. Most levels of sport from high school and above use at least one scoreboard for keeping score, measuring time, and displaying statistics. Scoreboards in the past used ...

and the old pavilion, which serves as a clubhouse. The ground has a capacity of up to 5,000, with Derbyshire attracting crowds of 3,500 to 4,000.

Records

List A

* Highest team total: 292 for 9 by

, 1985 * Lowest team total: 104 all out by

v Derbyshire, 1990 * Highest individual innings: 91 by

Phil Neale Phillip Anthony Neale (born 5 June 1954) is an English former first-class cricketer who played for Worcestershire County Cricket Club, captaining the team to success in the County Championship in 1988 and 1989. He also played association foot ...

for Worcestershire v Derbyshire, 1988 * Best bowling in an innings: 5-39 by

Alan Warner Alan Warner (born 1964) is a Scottish novelist who grew up in Connel, near Oban. His notable novels include '' Morvern Callar'' and ''The Sopranos'' – the latter being the inspiration for the play '' Our Ladies of Perpetual Succour'' and its ...

, for Derbyshire v Worcestershire, 1985

References

External links

Tunstall Road
at

ESPNcricinfo 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 ...

{{Staffordshire CCC Biddulph Sports venues completed in 1870 1870 establishments in England Sports venues in Staffordshire Cricket grounds in Staffordshire Staffordshire County Cricket Club Derbyshire County Cricket Club Defunct football venues in England