The County Ground in

Chelmsford Chelmsford () is a city in the City of Chelmsford district in the county of Essex, England. It is the county town of Essex and one of three cities in the county, along with Colchester and Southend-on-Sea. It is located north-east of London ...

Essex Essex ( ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the East of England, and one of the home counties. It is bordered by Cambridgeshire and Suffolk to the north, the North Sea to the east, Kent across the Thames Estuary to the ...

, has been the official home ground of

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 w ...

since 1967. It has been used for

first-class cricket First-class cricket, along with List A cricket and Twenty20 cricket, is one of the highest-standard forms of cricket. A first-class match is of three or more days scheduled duration between two sides of eleven players each and is officially adju ...

since 1925 and

List A List A cricket is a classification of the Limited overs cricket, 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 competit ...

matches since 1969. The capacity is 6,500, mostly in single-tier seating with a single double-tiered stand. The pavilion was completed in the 1970s.

History

Essex's first match at the ground took place in June 1925 against

Oxford University The University of Oxford is a collegiate research university in Oxford, England. There is evidence of teaching as early as 1096, making it the oldest university in the English-speaking world and the second-oldest continuously operating u ...

. and their first

County Championship The County Championship, currently known for sponsorship reasons as the Rothesay County Championship, is the only domestic first-class cricket competition in England and Wales. Established in 1890, it is organised by the England and Wales Cri ...

game at Chelmsford was against

Somerset Somerset ( , ), Archaism, archaically Somersetshire ( , , ) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in South West England. It is bordered by the Bristol Channel, Gloucestershire, and Bristol to the north, Wiltshire to the east ...

in 1926. When the club left its headquarters at Leyton Cricket Ground 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 Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a Ceremonial counties of England, ceremonial county in the West Midlands (region), West Midlands of England. It is bordered by Staffordshire and Leicestershire to the north, Northamptonshire to the east, Ox ...

'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. In April 2024, Essex Cricket renamed the two bowling ends of the ground after former players Sir Alastair Cook and Graham Gooch. The River End was renamed to the Sir Alastair Cook End, and the Hayes Close End to the Graham Gooch End.

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 Graham Richard Napier (born 6 January 1980) is an English former cricketer. He was a right-handed batsman and a right-arm medium pace bowler. Napier played first-class cricket for his home county of Essex since the outset of his senior career i ...

scored 152 off 58 balls (16 sixes and 10 fours) in a

Twenty20 Twenty20 (abbreviated T20) is a shortened format of cricket. At the professional level, it was introduced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) in 2003 for the county cricket, inter-county competition. In a Twenty20 game, the two t ...

match v

Sussex Sussex (Help:IPA/English, /ˈsʌsɪks/; from the Old English ''Sūþseaxe''; lit. 'South Saxons'; 'Sussex') is an area within South East England that was historically a kingdom of Sussex, kingdom and, later, a Historic counties of England, ...

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

and

Friends Provident Trophy The Friends Provident Trophy was a one-day cricket competition in the United Kingdom. It was one of the four tournaments in which the eighteen first-class cricket, first-class counties competed each season. They were joined by teams from Scott ...

games. The

Ford Motor Company Ford Motor Company (commonly known as Ford) is an American multinational corporation, multinational automobile manufacturer headquartered in Dearborn, Michigan, United States. It was founded by Henry Ford and incorporated on June 16, 1903. T ...

had naming rights for the ground for between 2005 and 2013. From 2017 to 2019 the naming rights to the stadium were bought by Cloudfm and the ground was 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 six men's

One Day International One Day International (ODI) is a format of cricket, played between two teams with international status, in which each team faces a fixed number of fifty overs, with the game lasting up to 7 hours. The World Cup, generally held every four yea ...

(ODI) matches. The first ODI was played between

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a country comprising mainland Australia, the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania and list of islands of Australia, numerous smaller isl ...

and

India India, officially the Republic of India, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by area, seventh-largest country by area; the List of countries by population (United Nations), most populous country since ...

during the

1983 Cricket World Cup The 1983 Cricket World Cup (officially the Prudential Cup '83) was the third 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 India, officially the Republic o ...

and the most recent ODI match was played between

Ireland Ireland (, ; ; Ulster Scots dialect, Ulster-Scots: ) is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean, in Northwestern Europe. Geopolitically, the island is divided between the Republic of Ireland (officially Names of the Irish state, named Irelan ...

and

Bangladesh Bangladesh, officially the People's Republic of Bangladesh, is a country in South Asia. It is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eighth-most populous country in the world and among the List of countries and dependencies by ...

during the Bangladeshi cricket team against Ireland in England in 2023 series in May 2023, as part of the 2020–2023 ICC Cricket World Cup Super League.

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