CRICKET


T


he Mote cricket ground has the stuff of legend about it. Cricketers first strode out to play within this picturesque setting 165 years ago. England stalwart


Colin Cowdray batted for Kent here and the world’s fastest bowler, Shoaib Akhtar, later pounded the turf. Standing on the outskirts of Maidstone,


Kent, The Mote rose on the western fringe of Mote Park, then a 558-acre country estate. The first earl of Romney built a mansion there in the 1790s, before the second and third earls redeveloped the grounds in the mid-19th century, establishing cricket provision by 1857. That year, The Mote


played Cobham to launch the site’s senior level activity. After purchasing the estate in 1895, Marcus Samuel, 1st Viscount Bearsted, and co-founder of the Shell oil company, extensively developed the cricketing acres, levelling the ground and turning the square ninety degrees in 1907 to allow them to host county cricket regularly. The Tabernacle, his private pavilion, erected between 1909 and 1910, remains a Grade 2 listed building.


Kent outground


Selling Mote Park to Maidstone Corporation in 1927 on the death of his father, the second viscount excluded the cricket


ground from the sale, gifting it to The Mote Cricket Club. In its role as a Kent County Cricket Club outground, the venue hosted more than 200 first class matches between 1859 and 2005, the year the first eleven played their final game there. “I loved watching Kent 1st at The Mote,” recalls current head groundsman Howard Waters, “and bowled here for Maidstone Grammar School U18s before joining the cricket club itself in 2000. Aesthetically, it’s one of the most attractive grounds in the county, enjoying uninterrupted views of the North Downs.”


With two squares to tend, solo grounds professional Howard is kept busy from


PC June/July 2019


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