Arundel Castle Cricket 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 str ...

ground in Arundel,

West Sussex West Sussex is a county in South East England on the English Channel coast. The ceremonial county comprises the shire districts of Adur, Arun, Chichester, Horsham, and Mid Sussex, and the boroughs of Crawley and Worthing. Covering an ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, nearby to Arundel Castle. It has been in use since 1952. The ground was first used by the Sussex 1st XI in 1972 for limited-over matches and in 1990 for

County Championship The County Championship (referred to as the LV= Insurance County Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales and is organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB). It bec ...

matches. As of the end of the

2015 English cricket season The 2015 English cricket season was the 116th in which the County Championship had been an official competition. It began in April with a round of university matches, and continued until the conclusion of a round of County Championship matches ...

, Arundel Castle has hosted 32 first-class matches, 20 List A matches, and 5 T20 matches.

Cricket history

Many matches have been played at the ground over the years by Sussex, often as part of the Arundel Festival, an annual event held in August. Arundel Castle's first List A match was a 1972 match between Sussex and

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

in the

John Player League The NatWest Pro40 League was a one-day cricket league for first-class cricket counties in England and Wales. It was inaugurated in 1999, but was essentially the old Sunday League retitled to reflect large numbers of matches being played on days ...

. Gloucestershire won the match by 2 wickets, helped by a five-wicket haul from

Mike Procter Michael John Procter (born 15 September 1946) is a South African former cricketer. A fast bowler and hard hitting batsman, he proved himself a colossal competitor in English first class cricket. He was denied the international stage by South Af ...

. In 1990, Arundel Castle hosted its first

match. The match was between Sussex and

Hampshire Hampshire (, ; abbreviated to Hants) is a ceremonial and non-metropolitan county in western South East England on the coast of the English Channel. Home to two major English cities on its south coast, Southampton and Portsmouth, Hampshire ...

and ended in a draw, after

Colin Wells Colin Wells may refer to: *Colin Wells (actor) (born 1963), English actor in ''Titus'' *Colin Wells (cricketer) (born 1960), English cricketer *Colin Wells (historian) (1933–2010), English classicist *Colin Wells (Spooks), fictional character in ...

scored a century for Sussex and Chris Smith scored a century for Hampshire. The ground has hosted some tour matches, and also MCC matches against international A sides. The first of these matches was in 2000 as part of Zimbabwe's tour of England against a

West Indians A West Indian is a native or inhabitant of the West Indies (the Antilles and the Lucayan Archipelago). For more than 100 years the words ''West Indian'' specifically described natives of the West Indies, but by 1661 Europeans had begun to use ...

team. The match ended in a draw, with West Indians

Sherwin Campbell Sherwin Legay Campbell (born 1 November 1970) is a former Barbadian cricketer who played 52 Tests and 90 One Day Internationals for the West Indies, and also a former ODI captain for Windies. Domestic career Campbell played a total of 177 fi ...

, Brian Lara and

Shivnarine Chanderpaul Shivnarine "Shiv" Chanderpaul (born 16 August 1974) is a Guyanese people, Guyanese cricket coach and former captain of the West Indies cricket team. Considered one of the greatest batsmen of his era, Chanderpaul is the first Indo-Caribbean to pla ...

all scoring centuries, as well as Zimbabwe and Sussex cricketer Murray Goodwin. In 2002, Arundel Castle hosted a drawn match between Indians and West Indies A and in 2003 it hosted a drawn match between

India A The India A cricket team is a national cricket team representing India. It is the second-tier of Indian international cricket, below the full India national cricket team. The team is currently captained by Priyank Panchal in first-class cricket a ...

and

South Africans The population of South Africa is about 58.8 million people of diverse origins, cultures, languages, and religions. The South African National Census of 2022 was the most recent census held; the next will be in 2032. In 2011, Statistics South ...

. The ground hosted MCC matches against the

Australians Australians, colloquially known as Aussies, are the citizens, nationals and individuals associated with the country of Australia. This connection may be residential, legal, historical or ethno-cultural. For most Australians, several (or all) ...

in 2001, the West Indians in 2004, and Sri Lanka A in 2007; the MCC lost all three matches. In June 2010, the

Unicorns The unicorn is a legendary creature that has been described since Classical antiquity, antiquity as a beast with a single large, pointed, spiraling horn (anatomy), horn projecting from its forehead. In European literature and art, the unicor ...

hosted Sussex in a match at Arundel Castle. The Unicorns chased down Sussex's score of 325/4 from 40 overs, scoring 327/4, which at the time was the highest successful run chase in the history of 40-over cricket. Batsman

Wes Durston Wesley John Durston (born 6 October 1980) is an English cricketer who most recently played for Derbyshire, having represented Somerset between 1999 and 2009, and the Unicorns during the 2010 season. He learnt his cricket at Millfield School and ...

scored 117 from 68 balls for the Unicorns. In 2015, a T20 match between Sussex and Surrey was abandoned after Surrey cricketers

Moisés Henriques Moisés Constantino Henriques (; born 1 February 1987) is a Portugal-born Australian professional cricketer who plays for Australia, New South Wales and the Sydney Sixers. An all-rounder, he is the first cricketer born in Portugal to play for ...

and

Rory Burns Rory Joseph Burns (born 26 August 1990) is an English cricketer who plays internationally for the England Test cricket team. In domestic cricket, he captains Surrey in first-class and List A cricket. Burns made his Test debut in 2018. He le ...

collided with each other whilst attempting a catch. Both players were subsequently hospitalised. In 2020, Hampshire played their home games in the

2020 Bob Willis Trophy The 2020 Bob Willis Trophy was a first-class cricket tournament held in the 2020 English cricket season, and the inaugural edition of the Bob Willis Trophy. It was separate from the County Championship, which was not held in 2020 due to the i ...

at Arundel as their normal home venue of the Rose Bowl in Southampton was in use by England for Test matches.

Other history

In September 2003,

Zoological Society of London The Zoological Society of London (ZSL) is a charity devoted to the worldwide conservation of animals and their habitats. It was founded in 1826. Since 1828, it has maintained the London Zoo, and since 1931 Whipsnade Park. History On 29 ...

released 1,000

crickets Crickets are orthopteran insects which are related to bush crickets, and, more distantly, to grasshoppers. In older literature, such as Imms,Imms AD, rev. Richards OW & Davies RG (1970) ''A General Textbook of Entomology'' 9th Ed. Methuen 8 ...

– specifically ''

Gryllus campestris ''Gryllus campestris'', the European field cricket or simply the field cricket in the British Isles, is the type species of crickets in its genus and tribe Gryllini. These flightless dark colored insects are comparatively large; the males ra ...

'', the endangered British field cricket – into the wild at the Arundel Castle ground and another undisclosed location in

. In 2012, ''

The Sunday Telegraph ''The Sunday Telegraph'' is a British broadsheet newspaper, founded in February 1961 and published by the Telegraph Media Group, a division of Press Holdings. It is the sister paper of ''The Daily Telegraph ''The Daily Telegraph'', kn ...

'' included Arundel Castle in their list of "Britain's best 5 cricket grounds", calling it a "great stop on a family day out in the Sussex countryside." In 2015, ''

The Independent ''The Independent'' is a British online newspaper. It was established in 1986 as a national morning printed paper. Nicknamed the ''Indy'', it began as a broadsheet and changed to tabloid format in 2003. The last printed edition was publish ...

'' listed the ground in the 10 most picturesque outgrounds to watch County Cricket.

Records

First-class cricket records

: Source:

List A cricket records

: Source:

References

External links

Cricinfo Website – Ground Page

{{Southern Vipers Cricket grounds in West Sussex