Grace Road is a cricket

Cricket

Cricket is a bat-and-ball game played between two teams of 11 players on an oval-shaped field, at the centre of which is a rectangular 22-yard long pitch. One team bats, trying to score as many runs as possible while the other team bowls and fields, trying to dismiss the batsmen and thus limit the...

 ground, in Leicester

Leicester

Leicester is a city and unitary authority in the East Midlands of England, and the county town of Leicestershire. The city lies on the River Soar and at the edge of the National Forest...

, England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, home to Leicestershire County Cricket Club

Leicestershire County Cricket Club

Leicestershire County Cricket Club is one of the 18 major county clubs which make up the English and Welsh national cricket structure, representing the historic county of Leicestershire. It has also been representative of the county of Rutland....

.

History

The land which Grace Road is built on was bought by Leicestershire County Cricket Club in 1877 from the then Duke of Rutland

John Manners, 7th Duke of Rutland

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 and spent the massive sum of £40,000 on developing a cricket club, athletic track and hotel. The first match played on the ground took place three months later, when Leicestershire beat the touring Australia

Australian cricket team

The Australian cricket team is the national cricket team of Australia. It is the joint oldest team in Test cricket, having played in the first Test match in 1877...

 team. Contrary to popular belief, the road was named after a local property owner, not W. G. Grace

W. G. Grace

William Gilbert Grace, MRCS, LRCP was an English amateur cricketer who is widely acknowledged as one of the greatest players of all time, having a special significance in terms of his importance to the development of the sport...

.

Leicestershire left the Grace Road site in 1901 due to lack of public transport to the ground causing low crowds. They moved to a site near to Aylestone Road

Aylestone Road

Aylestone Road is a cricket stadium in Leicester, England.It was for many years the home to Leicestershire County Cricket Club. It was first used in 1901 after it was decided that Grace Road was too far from the centre of the city...

, as it was closer to the city centre. Leicestershire did eventually return to Grace Road after the end of the Second World War in 1946 and have been based there ever since, buying the land back in 1966.

The record attendance is 16,000 who watched the match against the touring 1948 Australians.

International Cricket

There have been three One Day International played at Grace Road, though none have involved England.

In the 1983 Cricket World Cup

1983 Cricket World Cup

The 1983 ICC Cricket World Cup was the third edition of the ICC Cricket World Cup tournament. It was held from 9 June to 25 June 1983 in England and was won by India. Eight countries participated in the event. The preliminary matches were played in two groups of four teams each, and each...

 eventual winners India beat Zimbabwe, chasing a target of 156 to win by 5 wickets. The second and third games were both in the 1999 World Cup

1999 Cricket World Cup

-England:-Outside England:-Group A:-Results:-------------------------------------------------------------Group B:-Results:------------------------------------------------------------...

. In the second Zimbabwe beat India by three runs and in the third the West Indies

West Indian cricket team

The West Indian cricket team, also known colloquially as the West Indies or the Windies, is a multi-national cricket team representing a sporting confederation of 15 mainly English-speaking Caribbean countries, British dependencies and non-British dependencies.From the mid 1970s to the early 1990s,...

 thrashed Scotland by 8 wickets.

Dimensions

In front of the wicket at both ends the pitch is measured at 56 metres, whilst square of the wicket on both sides the dimensions are recorded as 76 metres. This is larger than most county grounds, but smaller than some of England's major international venues such as Lord's or The Oval

The Oval

The Kia Oval, still commonly referred to by its original name of The Oval, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval...

.