The Salisbury and South Wiltshire Sports Club (also known as the County Ground) is a sports ground in

Salisbury Salisbury ( ) is a cathedral city in Wiltshire, England with a population of 41,820, at the confluence of the rivers Avon, Nadder and Bourne. The city is approximately from Southampton and from Bath. Salisbury is in the southeast of ...

, Wiltshire, England, which is used for Hockey, Cricket and other sports.

Hockey

The club runs Women's and Men's teams and has a flourishing Junior section.

Cricket

The first recorded

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 ...

match at the ground was in 1854, when South Wiltshire played an

All England Eleven In English cricket since the first half of the 18th century, various ''ad hoc'' teams have been formed for short-term purposes which have been called England (or sometimes "All-England"; i.e., in the sense of "the rest of England") to play against, ...

. The ground first hosted Wiltshire County Cricket Club in 1888, however the ground hosted its first Minor Counties Championship match seventeen years later when

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 ...

played Hertfordshire in 1905. The ground next hosted Wiltshire's home matches from 1923 to 1949 and then from 1958 to the present day. The ground has also hosted a single

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 ...

match between Wiltshire and

Herefordshire Herefordshire () is a county in the West Midlands of England, governed by Herefordshire Council. It is bordered by Shropshire to the north, Worcestershire to the east, Gloucestershire to the south-east, and the Welsh counties of Monmouthsh ...

. The ground has also hosted List A matches. The first List-A match played on the ground was between Wiltshire and

Scotland Scotland (, ) is a Countries of the United Kingdom, country that is part of the United Kingdom. Covering the northern third of the island of Great Britain, mainland Scotland has a Anglo-Scottish border, border with England to the southeast ...

in the

2000 NatWest Trophy The 2000 NatWest Trophy was the 20th and last NatWest Trophy before being renamed as the Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy for the 2001 season. It was an English limited overs county cricket tournament which was held between 2 May and 26 August 2 ...

. The ground has hosted two further List-A matches involving Wiltshire: against

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 ...

in the 2002 Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy, and

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 ...

in the 2005 Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy. In local domestic cricket, the ground is the home of South Wilts Cricket Club who play in the

Southern Premier Cricket League The Southern Premier Cricket League is the top level of competition for recreational club cricket in central southern England. The League was founded in 1969 under the name Southern Cricket League, and in 2000 it adopted the name Southern Prem ...

. South Wilts have been playing on the main ground since 1854. The second cricket ground was created in 1984 and Salisbury Wanderers played there from 1984 until 2001 where they folded. Since 2001, the second ground has been home of the club's Third and Fourth XI's.

Facilities

The site has two cricket grounds, an artificial grass pitch (and a full-size grass football pitch). The first pavilion, a small one-storey building, was built at the Wilton Road ground in 1955 at a cost of £1,000 to accommodate South Wilts Cricket Club and Bemerton Athletic Football Club. This pavilion was closed in 2012, after a long-running fundraising effort for a new clubhouse was completed. The new clubhouse was built with costs rising to £1.2 million. The current clubhouse is a two-storey building that caters for hockey and football in the winter and cricket in the summer. The clubhouse also caters for all Sports Club events, which range from music events to quiz nights.

External links

*
Salisbury and South Wiltshire Sports Club
on CricketArchive

on Cricinfo {{Wiltshire CCC Cricket grounds in Wiltshire Field hockey venues in England Salisbury Sports venues completed in 1854 1854 establishments in England