Hampshire County Cricket Club was established in August 1863.[1] Since then, Hampshire have played first-class, List A one-day, and Twenty20 matches at a number of venues across what is considered the historic extent of Hampshire. Unlike most professional sports, in which a team usually has a single fixed home ground, county cricket clubs have traditionally used different home grounds in various towns and cities for home matches, although the use of minor "outgrounds" has diminished since the 1980s.[2][3] Particularly in the early days of county cricket where personal transportation was a rare commodity, it was an expectation that cricket would have to be taken to the large and diverse areas a county would geographically cover.[4] The Antelope Ground hosted their inaugural home first-class match in 1864, whilst the County Ground has hosted the most home matches in both first-class and one-day cricket, when it was used as Hampshire's headquarters between 1885 and 2000. Hampshire's current headquarters, since 2001, has been at the Rose Bowl. As of 2024, Hampshire have played home fixtures at fourteen venues.
- ^ Collis, Sam. "A brief history of Hampshire". ESPNcricinfo. Retrieved 14 September 2011.
- ^ Glover, Andrew (10 April 2013). "Remembering Yorkshire County Cricket Club's out grounds". BBC News. Archived from the original on 25 September 2015. Retrieved 24 May 2015.
- ^ Stockton, Edward (13 June 2006). "Out of town but not out of favour". ESPNcricinfo. Archived from the original on 27 June 2015. Retrieved 26 June 2015.
- ^ Allen, Dave (4 December 2019). "From The Archive: Hampshire's Outgrounds". www.utilitabowl.com. Retrieved 2 November 2024.