Officers Club Services Ground, Aldershot

Officers Club Services Ground

Ground information

Location

Aldershot, Hampshire

Coordinates

51°15′37″N 0°46′17″W / 51.2603°N 0.7713°W

Establishment

1861

Team information

Army	(1906–present)
Hampshire	(1905–1948)

As of 29 December 2011
Source: Ground profile

The Officers Club Services Ground is a cricket ground in Fleet Road, Aldershot, Hampshire, England. Aldershot had been a small village until 1853, but was transformed following the purchase of 25,000 acres of land by the War Office for military training. Over the following two decades Aldershot was transformed into a garrison town, by 1874 a number of cricket grounds, including the Officers Club Services Ground, had been constructed for use by the various regiments garrisoned there.

The first recorded match to have been played there was in 1861 between the Knickerbockers and I Zingari. Over the coming decade the ground was used by the Aldershot Division in matches primarily against I Zingari and the Marylebone Cricket Club, though not exclusively as some matches were against other parts of the armed forces. A pavilion was built in 1887.Hampshire first played first-class cricket there in the 1905 County Championship against Surrey, with Hampshire losing this match by 7 wickets. Hampshire used the ground twice more as a venue before World War I, playing Surrey in 1906 and Somerset in 1910. This season also saw its first-class use by an armed services team, when a combined Army and Navy team played a combined Oxford and Cambridge Universities team, which marked the final first-class match played there before World War I. First-class cricket did not return immediately after the war, the first match of note came in May 1932 when the Army played the touring Indians in a two-day non-first-class match, which was abandoned without a ball bowled. Later that year in June, first-class cricket returned to the ground when the Army played the touring South Americans, which the Army won by 5 wickets.

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