Qualla: Edgbaston Cricket Ground

Edgbaston Cricket Ground: Introduction

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK, CC BY 2.0. In 1885, Calthorpe Estates offered Warwickshire County Cricket Club twelve acres of what they frankly described as a meadow of rough grazing land beside the River Rea. It was not the parcel the club had wanted. The Wycliffe Ground on Pershore Road would have been more elegant, but the Calthorpes had reasoned that the less attractive plot would gain more from association with a cricket ground than the other way around. Warwickshire agreed to lease the meadow for five pounds an acre, spent another twelve hundred and fifty pounds draining it and putting up a wooden pavilion, and on 7 June 1886 played their first match against the MCC. Three thousand people came over two days. Two months later, six thousand turned out to watch them play Australia. The rough grazing had become Edgbaston.

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Image: Tony Hisgett from Birmingham, UK | CC BY 2.0

Edgbaston Cricket Ground: From meadow to Test ground

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit JimmyGuano, CC BY-SA 3.0. The man who pushed for Birmingham was William Ansell, the club secretary, who had argued against Rugby and Leamington Spa on grounds of railway connections and city size. He envisioned first-class status for the county and Test status for the ground, and he was right on both coun...

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Image: JimmyGuano | CC BY-SA 3.0

Edgbaston Cricket Ground: The crowd that became a player

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Martin Meredith, CC BY-SA 2.0. Edgbaston earned a reputation that other Test grounds in England did not quite share: a partisan, noisy, sometimes raucous home that rattled visiting teams. The Eric Hollies Stand, named after the Warwickshire leg-spinner who once bowled Don Bradman for a duck, sits where the old...

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Image: Martin Meredith | CC BY-SA 2.0

Edgbaston Cricket Ground: Records etched into the outfield

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Will Noakes, CC BY 2.0. Some grounds collect minor records. Edgbaston collects the kind that get reprinted in every almanac. In 1957, Peter May and Colin Cowdrey put on 411 against the West Indies, still England's highest Test partnership. In 1994, Brian Lara walked out for Warwickshire and scored 501 n...

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Image: Will Noakes | CC BY 2.0

Edgbaston Cricket Ground: Brumbrella and the redevelopment years

Wed, 27 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Ronald Iguana, CC BY 2.0. For decades, one of Edgbaston's quirks was the Brumbrella, a motorised rain cover the size of the pitch that rolled across the square on tracks. It retired in 2000, but the ground kept changing. Between 2010 and 2011, the entire south side came down. The old pavilion, parts of wh...

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Image: Ronald Iguana | CC BY 2.0