From the Top of the World to the South Pole, these 12 Locations Prove Cricket Has No Boundaries.
Cricket is considered by many to be the world’s greatest sport. It is one of the oldest games ever played, and it is popular around the world. Some amazing legends like Donald Bradman and Sachin Tendulkar have cracked the willow all across the globe. But, with a game so loved, where have the most exotic cricket matches been played? We have compiled a list of some of those locations. And here are twelve of the world’s most exotic cricket matches ever played.
12.) Switzerland’s Cricket on Ice Tournament
Switzerland’s Cricket on Ice has become a regular winter event in the frigid Swiss mountains. Every year, for three days in February, the most prestigious event in Swiss cricket happens on the lake of St. Moritz.
The St. Moritz Cricket Club founded the international Cricket on Ice tournament in 1989. That was the year of the first game on the frozen lake. Since 1989, celebrities and cricket stars have participated in the winter outing. The tournament has now expanded to six teams vying for the coveted Cricket on Ice Trophy.
11.) Caribbean Carnival Amid the Windward Islands
The Caribbean islands are home to seemingly endless festivals and cricket grounds. Spread over approximately sixteen locations, West Indies cricket matches are an experience to behold. Blue skies and clear seas that never get cold surround these Caribbean venues.
Arnos Valley Stadium is home to the Windward Islands Cricket Association. These beautiful grounds saw their first-ever international match played in 1981. That game against England ended in a close victory for the home team. But more unbelievable than that slight win is the view.
One end of Arnos Valley Stadium faces the flawless Caribbean Sea. Fans get a breathtaking view of the highest mountain points of this beautiful island like giants peeking out from the past. And, if that isn’t enough, every other part of the great green grounds is surrounded by island homes and palm trees. It truly is an unbelievable scene.
10.) Playing Cricket on Top of the World
In 2009, fifty people took a nine-day journey up seventeen thousand feet to play an eleven-on-eleven cricket match at the base camp of Mount Everest. The highest game on earth at the time consisted of two teams named after Edmund Hillary and Sherpa guide Tenzing Norgay.
The idea for one of the most exotic cricket matches came two years earlier when a London marketing manager noticed that the Gorak Shep settlement looked just like a perfect cricket oval. It took some effort to remove boulders and level the pitch, but the sky was the limit after everything was in order. Hillary defeated team Tenzing that day by thirty-six runs.
9.) Samoan Kilikiti in the South Pacific Sea
The island of Samoa is home to the game Kilikiti. Kilikiti is one of the world’s most unique and exotic variations of cricket. Cricket was brought to Samoa in the early years of the eighteen hundreds when English missionaries introduced the game to the people of the Polynesian islands.
A Kilikiti bat is made of coconut trees and is a war-like club called a “lapalapa.” The Kilikiti ball is composed of rubber and palm trees. Kilikiti players perform in the traditional lava-lava attire, and Kilikiti is the national sport of Samoa.
Official Kilikiti rules exist, and most games last two innings like in Test cricket. However, in Kilikiti, each innings lasts only thirty minutes as opposed to test cricket innings that could last hours.
8.) High in the Himalayan Home of the Dalai Lama
The highest professional cricket stadium on planet Earth sits 7,000 feet in the air. It is also one of the most beautiful cricket venues imaginable. The stadium in question is the Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium in Dharamshala, India.
At 1,500 miles long and 160 miles wide, the Himalayas travel through five countries, including China, India, and Pakistan, and are home to more than 100 peaks over 23,600 feet high. Just as impressive as the mountain peaks is that the World’s Greatest Game is in the hometown of one of the world’s holiest people, the Dalai Lama of Tibet.
The stadium has seen some of the greatest players take the crease. It has also been home to the IPL and the Ranji Trophy for domestic matches. Its first ODI was between India and England in January 2013. And, in 2017, the first Test match in HPCA history took place between India and Australia.
7.) A 1,600-Year-Old Haunted Coastal Castle
Everyone knows a mainstay of English culture is the castle. Bamburgh Castle on the northeast UK coast played its first official cricket match on August 1st, 1860. The local squad led by Reverend William Darnell took on the blokes of North Sunderland in that match where a beautiful, sandy beach sits on the other side of the castle.
Built in 420 AD, Bamburgh Castle’s cricket season runs from late April to early September. Fans can stop into the Bamburgh Castle Inn Pub for some fine ale and a great time. Visitors can even catch a glimpse of the Pink Lady specter who threw herself onto the boulders below. Or maybe they can meet the Green Lady, another ghost who tragically fell down the castle’s stairs.
6.) Cricket Among Ancient Stone Circles
The Castlerigg Stone Circle is a megalithic structure constructed between 3,200 BCE and 2,500 BCE. Similar in function to Stonehedge, the circle is surrounded by rolling hills, gray skies, gusting wind, and soft grass. Of course, it makes a perfect spot for one of the world’s most exotic cricket matches.
The site may have been used as a public square to sell or trade axes during rituals and ceremonies. Regardless, Castlerigg makes a perfect infield for a game of cricket. Some say Castlerigg is better than Stonehenge in overall beauty. Cricket fans would agree considering countless matches have been played at this ancient location.
Interestingly, a local cricketer purchased the land on which Stonehenge sits in 1915. The earliest known cricket match held at that famous monument happened in 1781. So, whether it’s Castlerigg or Stonehenge, playing cricket among ancient calendars to the stars is an experience like none other.
5.) Bramble Bank Sandbar Cricket
Keeping it UK, the annual Bramble Bank match has been called both “quintessentially British” and “the world’s most pointless sporting event.” After all, nowhere else does the pitch disappear in the middle of the game. The annual event only lasts for about an hour since that’s how long the sandbar on which it is played appears during low tide.
There’s no official address to the Bramble Bank grounds since the game takes place in the ocean. But, if you want to attend the annual match, it’s located pretty much in the center of the Solent and the Solent between the Isle of Wight and the UK.
The game includes two sides as the Royal Southern Yacht Club squares off against the Island Sailing Club. Warning: rumor has it that the outcome of the match is always predetermined.
4.) Cricket on the Roof of Africa
On September 26th, 2014, a T20 cricket match happened in a crater just below the summit of Tanzania’s Mount Kilimanjaro. That game happened at an altitude of 18,799 feet. This feat smashed the previous record for the highest cricket match ever from that famous game on Everest in 2009.
The Tanzanian match between retired English and South African cricketers was dubbed Mt. Kili Madness. An artificial pitch was laid, and pictures from the event look like a cricket game on the surface of Mars. Additionally, Tanzania cricket has been making a resurgence. The nation’s first official cricket match in 1890.
3.) Cricket at the Bottom of Devil’s Peak
Newlands in Cape Town is one of the most breathtaking sights on earth. Its cricket grounds sit at the base of Table Mountain and Devil’s Peak – a 3,300-foot-high mountain range that looms high over South Africa. The gorgeous grounds have been around since 1888 and seat 25,000 wild cricket fans.
Newlands is the perfect destination for a New Year’s test match. And Cape Town University is gorgeous and worth a visit. The region has an amazing number of sights to visit, like the Iziko Bo-Kaap Museum, Boulders Beach, and Robben Island – the prison that held Nelson Mandela for 18 years.
2.) Beach Cricket Along Australia’s Golden Coast
Beach cricket is about as much fun as the sport can get. Played with plastic matting on the sand called a drop-in pitch, beach cricket also uses a tennis ball to make batting easier and more exciting. In many cases, the ocean becomes part of the game. The Australian beach is the perfect place for one the most exotic cricket matches available.
In some cases, the sea is grounds for causing a wicket. In others, it’s a boundary. But, in the most fun style of beach cricket, players have to field the ball in the water while runs still score. Australians – known for their drinking – often use a cooler and three cans of Foster’s for the stumps. It’s great to spend Christmas summer on the beach drinking cold ones and smashing sixes into the golden shores of Coolangatta.
1.) Frozen Cricket on the Seventh Continent
The first cricket match played on the coldest continent on Earth happened in 1985 on the ski track of a Hercules airplane. This Antarctic frozen match was created by Sir Arthur Watts. Watts used a tennis ball to make sure it didn’t sink in the continent’s layers of snow.
The match finished with a score of 102 frozen out to 129. Cricket in Antarctica has been played in the most isolated part of the world ever since that year. In 2012, a match to celebrate the one-hundredth anniversary of the first-ever expedition to the South Pole took place.
Did You Know the First International Cricket Match Ever Took Place Between the United States and Canada?
And the whole thing was put together by a mysterious, vanishing stranger who had nothing to do with either team. Read the story of the game that predated the first “official” international sports match by nearly 30 years.
