London Expansions

Surrey plans £UK50 m redevelopment of The Oval.

Nick Hoult.

London Daily Telegraph.

Friday, 9 June 2017.

PTG 2158-10955.

Surrey are planning a “big, bold and ambitious” £UK50 million ($A84.8 m) redevelopment of The Oval which will expand its capacity to 40,000, up 15,000 on the present limit, and make it the biggest dedicated cricket ground in England.  The news comes soon after details of a £UK135 million ($A232 m) investment proposal that could see the ground’s London rival, Lord’s, also substantially remodelled but increase its capacity to only 32,000 (PTG 2158-10950, 9 June 2017).

Plans currently in the pipeline for The Oval would see the Bedser Stand and Laker-Lock stands rebuilt, increasing capacity from the ground’s current level of 25,500 in time for the 2023 Ashes Test. The Bedser Stand houses the dressing rooms and indoor school but contains only 1,800 public seats and will be the first stand to be redeveloped.  Once finished, The Oval will be the biggest dedicated cricket ground in the world outside India or Australia.

Work will begin after the 2019 World Cup and will put the Oval at the forefront of English cricket as the new Twenty20 league is launched.  “English cricket needs a ground that can hold 40,000-plus supporters said Richard Thompson, the Surrey chairman.  “We have shown the demand is there and we would not contemplate this project unless we were confident we can fill this ground. We want to do something that is big, bold and ambitious and we know we can deliver it and we know we can fill it”.

Surrey have already held talks with the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and their landlord, the Duchy of Cornwall, and are confident they will not meet any significant planning issues.

In recent years the club has enjoyed unprecedented levels of ticket sales. It has built up a huge database of 282,000 ticket buyers and over the next week or so expect to sell out home ECB ‘Blast' Twenty20 games against Sussex and Middlesex some six weeks before those games are to take place. A capacity crowd filled the ground for Thursday’s Champions Trophy clash between India and Sri Lanka.

Richard Gould, the Surrey chief executive said: "The ECB are looking at places like the London Olympic Stadium because they want additional capacity. Well, we can deliver that here. When you look forward to the new Twenty20 competition this takes us to the next level. There is no other club that can do it”.

The club expects to be debt free by 2022, when they will have paid off loans incurred for the building of the OCS Stand in 2004. The new project will be funded through more borrowing but the club will also offer the ECB the option of financing it in return for the revenue from ticket sales from the extra seats.  Surrey’s 20-year staging agreement with the ECB, which guarantees one Test match per year, runs out in 2022. With the Olympic Stadium a potential future cricket venue, and likely to host games at the 2019 World Cup, Surrey face competition for matches.

MCC must keep two Tests a year to fund Lord's redevelopment plan.

Nick Hoult.

London Daily Telegraph.

Friday, 9 June 2017.

PTG 2158-10956.

Members of the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) will be told the club can fund their own £UK184 million redevelopment of Lord’s as long as they retain two Tests per year at the ground (PTG 2140-10851, 20 May 2017), and are at the forefront of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) new Twenty20 league.  A media report last month suggested development plans were on hold (PTG 2121-10761, 2 May 2017). 

The club’s 18,000 members will on Friday receive a 34-page report (plus 19 pages of appendices) setting out the two plans for the redevelopment of Lord’s before a vote in September on what Derek Brewer, the club’s chief executive, describes as the “biggest decision” in the MCC’s 230-year history.

The report has been written by the MCC executive team with input from external independent experts and Brewer hopes the process will finally end almost 20 years of stalemate and recriminations over the redevelopment of the ground and the construction of apartments at the Nursery End (PTG 2158-10950, 9 June 2017). Should either of the two options on the table get the go ahead, the work proposed will not be completed until 2032 at the earliest.

Brewer described it as "a very complex decision [that] will require a lot of thought from the members”.  “I have never in my business career [of] over 37 years come across an issue like it. It is really important after so much discussion over so many years that it is really put to bed one way or another. What we have done with this review, setting up the consultation process and the special general meeting [in September], is a way to draw it to a close and move forward”.

Lord’s, The Oval (PTG 2159-10955 above), and the former 2012 Olympic Stadium, which are all being looked at one way or another to host major cricket in the UK capital, are all located within 10 km of each other.