F E A T U R
E - C R I C K E T S T A D I A
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Steve Menary examines the rise of dedicated stadia
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Further funds will also be sought from national sports body Sport England,
while the club is also planning to add a £3 million golf driving range and
clubhouse to accompany a 1-hole/18-tee golf course that has already been built
in the grounds of the Rose Bowl. |
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This is a dramatic approach in the sleepy game of English club cricket but Hampshire's chairman Rod Bransgrove insists that running the stadium as a business is at the heart of the float. A cricket fanatic and local entrepreneur, he stepped in to help the cash-strapped club in 2000 and has put his own cash into funding the Rose Bowl. Mr Bransgrove explained: "This is to protect cricket not destroy it. I hope the traditionalists understand that.
"We live in a commercial age. Commercial reality has to take precedence -
especially in cash starved sports. We're in the business of stadium management
rather than running a cricket club. The core game of cricket is not sound
enough of itself to be a sound business." |
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The development of the ground, which staged made its maiden first class match in June 2001, took the club ten years and involved the sale of the club's home for the past century, Northlands Road, to house builders for £5 million.
The club's fund-raising was aided by a £7.1 million National Lottery grant
and a remarkable move by Queens College, Oxford, who put forward the 40 acres
for cricket on a 999-year lease and a further 120 acres to be used for other
facilities on a 120-year lease. |
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The first phase of the ground was built by Sheffield-based contractors Henry Boot, which used its experience working on a similar-looking hospitality suite at Lords, the spiritual home of cricket in central London, to beat off bids from rivals Bovis Lelliott and Heery and clinch the main £9.1 million construction management deal to build the ground. The ground was designed by architect Michael Hopkins & Partners with Buro Happold working as the structural engineer on the project, which featured 3,080 sq m of lightweight PVC fabric membrane used to create a distinctive roof that was supported by steel pylons and covered the main pavilion, cricket academy and a connecting atrium.
The three-storey pavilion features hospitality suites, a function room that
can hold 200 diners, along with seating for 600 people. Pre-cast concrete
terracing was installed at the ground, which opened with an initial capacity
of 6,000 and was sold out for the first day-night one-day game staged there
last summer - a derby game against neighbouring Sussex. |
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Floodlights were hired for this game but, as the club raises more funds, permanent lighting will be introduced and the capacity increased so that the Rose Bowl can hold 10,000 fans. All this hard work paid off in December last year,
when the English Cricket
Board (ECB) decided that the Rose Bowl would be allowed to stage one-day
international (ODI) matches from 2004. ECB chairman Tim Lamb said: "This
is a richly-deserved award for all those within the club who have worked so
hard to make the Rose Bowl such a splendid setting for cricket." |
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The decision meant that the ground will become the fifth new venue given ODI status - the others are Bristol, Canterbury, Cardiff and Chester-le-Street - since the ECB hosted the 1999 World Cup. Hampshire's ambitions for the Rose Bowl do not stop at ODI's and the club is aiming to secure test match status at the ground by the end of this decade. continued below... |
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Recollections of the County Ground...
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...continued This would need clearance from the International Cricket Council (ICC), the world game's governing body, but the signs for a go-ahead are good. Mark Harrison, communications manager at the ICC, said: "The ECB has announced it wants to play ODI games there but formally all grounds have to be assessed by the ICC.
Umpire Dickie Bird with
Staging test matches is also an ambition for the people behind another impressive new international cricket ground - the Rangiri Dambulla stadium in Sri Lanka. The stadium staged its first ODI match last year between the host country and England but only after a frantic scramble to get the ground up to scratch before the game on 23 May. The seeds of an idea for the Rangiri Dambulla ground were first sown in May 1998 by Thilanga Sumathipala, then the resident of the Board of Control for Cricket in Sri Lanka (BCCSL). He decided that Sri Lanka needed an international venue that would not be as vulnerable to the heavy monsoons that are common in that part of the world and regularly disrupt cricket matches. With an estimated £6.7 million in the bank after winning the 1996 ODI World Cup, the Sri Lankans also had the money to fund the venture. Situated in the north of Sri Lanka, Dambulla has average rainfall of under 50 inches a year so was perfect in terms of being able to provide year-round cricket unaffected by the monsoons but the actual site was dense jungle. Work finally started on site after a ground breaking ceremony on 26 September 2000 with up to 1,500 workers on site at the height of the construction and work carried out round the clock in the final three weeks leading up to the opening game. The Sri Lankans succeeded in finishing on time and 18,000 fans watched the opening game at the Rangiri Dambulla, which will eventually be able to hold 40,000 fans when the £2.9 million project is complete. The first phase featured a 1,000-seat grandstand with 100 VIP air-conditioned ground seats with extractor fans imported from as far away as the UK with Colchester-based Woods Air Movement installing a total of six fans in the main grandstand. The stadium is also the only ground in Sri Lanka - apart from the national arena in the capital Colombo - that is able to stage day-night matches under floodlights and was accepting spectators for as little as 15p on the day of opening match. Tickets are priced at a similar amount at the most recent addition to the international cricket stadium circuit - the Chittajong stadium in Bangladesh, which staged its first matches last Autumn with the visit of neighbours, Pakistan. Bangladesh is the latest country to be given test match status by the ICC and the game's authorities there are busy improving the facilities with construction work also underway on another new ground at Khilgaon in Dhaka. This 25,000-capacity arena is known as National Stadium Number Four but, like the Chittajong arena, the arena will need to be approved by the ICC before hosting ODI or test matches. continued below... |
Hampshire's new Rose Bowl
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... continued Mr Harrison added: "New grounds need to be inspected by an ICC team and the criteria they look for is things like a field with a good track record, good access and a well-managed ground." The Colonial Stadium in Melbourne, Australia and the Westpac Trust Stadium in Wellington, New Zealand are also new to the international cricket stadium circuit but the newest ground prior to the opening of Chittajong stadium was also in Asia at Jaipur in India, where the new ground will host ODI matches. Asia is a hotbed of cricket but two of the oddest proposals for new international cricket grounds are in parts of the world where cricket has little track record. Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates has hosted successful ODI tournaments for many years after a member of the local royal family took a liking to the game but the tiny country's compliment of international cricket stadiums is about to double. Work was due to be completed in April on a 22,000 capacity in Abu Dhabi, capital of the UAE, and the Emirates Cricket Board (ECB) hopes that the state-of-the-art floodlit ground will be hosting international matches by this September. Shaikh Nahyan bin Mubarak Al Nahyan, the ECB chairman, said: "We are already corresponding with various cricket boards, including that of Pakistan, India, England, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and their response has been very positive." Securing India's participation would be a coup as the country's cricket authorities pulled out of the Sharjah Cup last year and announced its team would no longer play in venues seen by many as experimental, such as the UAE, Toronto and Singapore.
"[We] are very confident that all cricket playing nations, including
India, will participate in the international tournament that we propose in
availing of the venue as a permanent address for world cricket," added
Sheikh Nahyan. |
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Possibly the oddest new venue to host the game could be in Morocco, where a
cricket ground has sprung up by the Royal Tangiers Golf Club. The ground is
one of around a dozen that cater for Morocco's cricketing community that
stands at an estimated 400 players and nine clubs.
A number of alternative venues were subsequently proposed and Dhaka and
Sharjah were names that cricket watchers would be familiar. In contrast, the
prospect of using Tangiers as an alternative venue was a real surprise. Local
businessman Bassem Afifi built the Tangiers stadium and estimated that the
project cost a mere £4 million to get up and running. Mr Afifi flew in
covers, mowers and rollers from the UK and has employed a French groundsman to
look after the field - one of fifteen staff working at the ground - and is
confident that the stadium will stage international cricket matches. |
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Other new venues are rumoured to be in the pipeline in similarly exotic places such as Riyadh, Jeddah and Dhahran - none of which are venues usually associated with the playing of cricket. But, like all new cricket grounds whether they are in Southampton or Tangiers, the ground has to be passed as suitable by the ICC. Passing new venues as fit to host test or ODI cricket in places such as Bangladesh is seen as essential to encouraging cricket in places where the game has a real grass-roots appeal. But the corruption scandals that have gripped the game in recent years have shown the game's vulnerability to gambling syndicates and this has been approached by the ICC with a set of new ground security measures. These rules have been drawn up in consultation with the captains of each of the test playing countries. Issued last November, they will have an impact on new cricket stadiums as they include installation of television cameras in vital areas such as outside the player's changing rooms and foyers to prevent interlopers approaching the players, although not in the actual changing rooms. ICC Chief Executive Officer Malcolm Speed said: "There has never been any intention of invading the privacy of the dressing room but there is every intention of catching the corruptors who have tarnished cricket's reputation over the past two years. "Corruption has been cricket's toughest challenge and it needs an aggressive approach to make sure the game and its players are adequately protected from it. The recent Board meeting accepted these proposals and we are now in the process of implementing them as a matter of priority." Whether the £4 million spent by Mr Afifi on the Tangiers stadium has brought the ground up to that sort of standard will only be known if he invites the ICC to inspect the ground. Only then will Mr Afifi know if his dream has a chance to become a reality and join the likes of Southampton on the international cricket circuit.
"My understanding about Tangiers is that Pakistan are going to play
cricket there but no approach has been made to the ICC to inspect the ground
yet and they will have to do that," concludes Mr Harrison. |
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ith the valuations of England's quoted and more highly marketable football
clubs having plunged in recent years, floating a county cricket club on the
stock market would seem anathema to most investors. But Hampshire became the
first county to go public with its recent £4.5 million floatation on the
Alternative Investment Market as the club sought to capitalise on its
impressive new £20 million stadium, the Rose Bowl.
Diggers working on Hampshire's new ground.
"We haven't been approached by the ECB yet but that shouldn't be a
problem at Southampton given the facilities on offer."
