The top 10 grounds to watch Test cricket

Yahoo

13-05-2025

The hushed ambience of Lord's, the boisterous nature of Edgbaston or the glorious views to be found at Dharamsala or Newlands? There are some special places to watch Test cricket, and here Scyld Berry names his 10 favourites.
Queen's Park in Port-of-Spain would have been on this list if it had not fallen into decline, owing not least to poor old drainage, and been overtaken by a new stadium in southern Trinidad. India's newest Test ground has taken its place. I must confess I have not been there - England played there after I had retired from touring - but in my imagination I have followed the footsteps of Kim into these hills, and those of the pundits whom Britain sent to measure the short distance to the Russian border. Mountains retain a simplicity that is lacking in the plains, and here it is in the form of a small basic stadium - which, like most stadiums in south Asia, could not be bothered to construct a roof to protect ordinary spectators from the sun, only VIPs. What sets it apart is the view of the Himalaya, even if the snowline recedes annually. Up the road the Dalai Lama has been living in exile since 1959, and yellow-robed lamas pad silently, lending the area a peace not to be found in the plains.
Once New Zealand's only purpose-built Test ground, Wellington's Basin Reserve can be delightful but it can be bone-numbing too when gales howl through the gap between North and South Island. Of England's management, even Brendon McCullum, though a New Zealander, wraps up warm for Wellington. A modern purpose-built ground, on the other side of North Island, has therefore taken Wellington's place. The view from one end is mundane, towards the marshalling yards where wagon-loads of trees are brought by train from denuded hills for shipment; but, viewed from the other end, the Mount is magical. Most of its original flora has been preserved, and the green of New Zealand vegetation has its own luminosity. Down to earth, the pitch helps seamers not spinners, like all the country's pitches; but a definite result has been achieved in all five Tests to date, once by Bangladesh in one of the all-time shock wins.
If you want to attend a single day of Test cricket in England, and cannot afford the king's ransom which is a ticket for Lord's (with a full view), Edgbaston has to be the answer. Even if little or nothing is happening in the middle, the Hollies stand will conjure up something. What could be more mundane than a Test between England and the modern West Indies? Yet last summer the Hollies conjured virtuoso performances out of Mark Wood, who launched rockets as if he were Cape Canaveral, and Ben Stokes who smote the fastest Test 50 for England off 24 balls - as, of all things, an opening batsman. The Hollies chants are humorous, truly witty at times if the Australians are in town, no longer foul-mouthed and obvious. T20 finals day is also an occasion like no other, a whole day and evening of singing bonhomie.
The enormity of Eden Gardens sets it apart: a few stadiums are bigger in their footmark, like the Melbourne Cricket Ground and Ahmedabad, but what they gain in capacity they lose in atmosphere. Eden Gardens, when packed to the gunwales, can never be quiet, whether by day for Tests or night for the IPL. The crowd indeed has been known to take over as the principal actor, by rioting in a couple of Tests in the 1960s, and forcing a World Cup semi-final to be abandoned when India were under-performing. A walk across the Gardens themselves - cricket balls flying to all parts - heightens the expectation and, once the morning smog and Hooghly mist have been burnt off, the cricket can be as dramatic as anywhere. In March 2001 here, when down and almost out against full-might Australia, Rahul Dravid and VVS Laxman staged the greatest of all Test partnerships (376) and, possibly, of all sporting comebacks.
The Melbourne Cricket Ground has lost its original soul: it was constructed on the edge of the new colony of free settlers as a cricket ground, then Australian Rules was invented as a winter pastime to keep the club's cricketers fit. But now corporate hospitality and Aussie Rules rule; the cricket pitches are drop-ins; Victoria have moved out to St Kilda. Only for its Boxing Day Test and the Big Bash does the MCG survive as a cricket stadium. The Sydney Cricket Ground has not quite gone the same way, so long as the main pavilion and the Ladies stand remain in all their urbane glory of painted green ironwork and wooden benches. Here Australia's finest cricketers have always strode out to the middle, or to the nets behind the pavilion to go through their paces in the public eye. Being the Oval of Australia so to speak, where the last Test venue of each summer is staged, the SCG is where the greats bow out to their well-earned applause. After this winter's Ashes will it be Steve Smith, or one or two of Australia's fast bowlers, and/or Ben Stokes?
The stands are pleasing enough, and especially the stretch of turved embankment known as the Oaks, but it is the clarity of the light that makes Newlands dazzle in the mind's eye and memory - and Table Mountain. Few would remember the Mountain if it were shrouded in cloud or Scotch mist, but its normal backdrop is a sky as unpolluted as only a southern hemisphere's can now be. The ground's Test history, dating back to 1889-90, has become multiracial, so that all of the world's best cricketers of the last generation have performed here - and, most notably perhaps, not one of South Africa's exceedingly fine and fast bowlers, but Shane Warne, who bowled almost the whole of one burning day in 2002, and finished with a match-winning six for 161 off 70 overs - in one innings. This square does give everyone a chance, not only the pace bowlers who wax at Centurion and Johannesburg. Trains to Newlands from central Cape Town are rumoured to be not always safe - so stay if possible at the Vineyard Hotel in Newlands, so called because planted in its garden were the first grapevines in South Africa that were brought to fruition, back in the 17th century.
No Test ground in England has such demotic origins as Trent Bridge, the product of professional cricketers like William Clarke, who moved into the Trent Bridge Inn after marrying the landlady, Frank Parr whose famous tree has now gone, William Gunn, who made cricket bats with his mate Moore, and Arthur Shrewsbury who captained England more than anyone before amateurs took over. Cricket in Nottingham remains the game of the people. Corporate hospitality boxes are few; celebrities do not sit in the stands waiting to be seen by cameras as in London; the crowds flowing over the Trent's bridge take possession of this ground and its soul. Freshness also stems from the prevailing greenness, not only of the turf but of officials in their blazers, reminding us of Sherwood Forest on Nottingham's other side. The ground's proportions are not classical: the new Radcliffe Road stand had to be built almost vertiginously steep to fit into the confines, but the boundary behind square-leg was short enough for Johnny Bairstow to launch Bazball in his match-winning hundred against New Zealand in 2022. It can be a paradise for batsmen, and spectators too.
Little can be said for day-night Tests, except for increased viewing figures in the evening for broadcasters, and crowds dwindled in Adelaide as dinner time approached, but this winter the Test will be restored to its diurnal glory. (If it had been yet another day/nighter, I would have been tempted to replace Adelaide in this list with Christchurch's Hagley Oval, though Arctic winds can make it unbearable in its exposed parkland.) Adelaide's splendour begins with the old road bridge and the new footbridge that make it the most accessible of all Test grounds; continues with the embankment of the Hill that has been allowed to remain, and the old wooden scoreboard on it, which still creaks in the sun and wind like an ancient mariner's ship; and carries round to the nets out the back, and the marquees where the affluent of South Australia can indulge in the finest of local seafood, wine from the hills and fruit from the Riverina. Oh, and the pitches are also excellent - if a pink ball is not darting round on them under floodlights - and mostly produce a fifth-day finish.
If you could go for a day-long picnic beside the sea anywhere in the world, Galle is as beautiful as anywhere, for its combination of natural and man-made finery. Throw a Test match into this setting and the day out is almost complete. At whichever end of Galle's ground you sit, you have sea to either side: either the Indian ocean, featuring a distant tanker or wooden fishing boats coming home, or the port side, where they unload their catch straight on to the harbour wall. If you are sitting with the city of Galle behind you, a no less delicious sight: the walls of the old fort built by the Portuguese then Dutch in their pursuit of spices, which were stored in their handsome stone warehouses. Only those who were flogged in Latin for failing to translate 'the soldiers and the virgins love the ramparts' can dislike this view. The Fort is a Unesco site, which could justifiably be extended to include the cricket ground, which has seen highs and lows: the 800th and last Test wicket taken by Muttiah Muralitharan, and the tsunami which washed over the ground and destroyed the pavilion. A week of Test cricket here, if slow-paced, is more enjoyable still if the Sri Lankan Board has forgotten to book up the Lighthouse hotel, on the coast and just out of town, before publishing the dates. The only fly in the ointment staying there is no mosquito but the undertow which can tear the unwary swimmer out to sea, as England's spinner Gareth Batty once was.
For all the changes in the global game, Lord's is still the ground of all cricket grounds, and a Test between England and Australia is the fixture of all cricket fixtures. The field is not the flattest - an eight-foot drop from the Grandstand down to the Tavern - but nowhere else is so carefully organised, every blade of grass in its place. This village-like slope indeed offers an additional test of skill for international batsmen - because it disrupts their balance, so their head tends to fall down the slope while batting at the pavilion end - and one which some of the finest have never passed: Jacques Kallis averaged ten at Lord's, Ricky Ponting averaged 16, Sachin Tendulkar 21, and no Test 50 between them, let alone a century. Yet they have all run upon this sward, every one of the finest cricketers - a combination of ancient and modern that is reaffirmed by the Victorian pavilion standing opposite the media centre. But what if the ground were known, not as Lord's, but Dark's, as MCC's second ground was called. There is something in a name - are you going to Dark's next week? - and the one time when Lord's was not the premier cricket ground in London was when Prince's opened in the 1870s, named not for royalty but after the surname of the brothers who ran it. Even then, I would say, the ground in St John's Wood would still be the cricket ground above all others, the sport's headquarters, its spiritual home.