The Home of Cricket

The Winton Oval

Winton as a club play on three different grounds, all public parks. The senior two teams do not even play in Bournemouth, their ground is in Ferndown as it boasts better facilities than that are available in any Bournemouth pitch, which are a requirement for the upper echelons of the amateur leagues. The other teams though share grounds at either Slades Farm or Winton Rec. The ‘better’ pitch is considered to be at Slades Farm, as the ground at Winton does suffer from being on the ‘to small’ side of what you would wish for. I prefer playing in Winton Rec though for several reasons.

The first is that although the Slades Farm pitch is bigger, it is on a bit of a slope. Also, as a park, Slades Farm is large and open, it seems a bit windswept and a bit unwelcoming and impersonal to me. Whereas the pitch at Winton is in a part of the park that is separate off from the rest of it, in a bit of a sunken bowl surrounded by trees, which gives it a more secluded but welcoming feel. On one side of the oval there are stone steps with benches for seating which gives it a genuine amphitheatre feel. Right next to this is a café, where you can by bourgeois coffee at a decent price during the game. Twenty seconds walk away is Winton’s clubhouse where you can get a pint, very important when considering facilities for low end cricket. The ground and pitch were falling into a shabby condition. A couple of years ago though, the club took over the responsibility for maintaining the pitch from the local council and some people have put in regular hard work to improve the quality of the ground. The pitch are now are of a decent quality; it should be at least as good as those that we have played on for the last two weeks. The outfield does have the problem of being used as a public park area so is never going to be billiard smooth but at least the grass is cut regularly and there are no bald patches at all so it should get judged as ‘good enough’.

Winton Rec is also my local park that I sometimes use as a park, and where I go to play tennis (on surprisingly good quality and well maintained tennis courts), so I have a bit of an emotional attachment to it for that reason.

The last advantage that Winton Rec has over Slades Farm, for a public park, is that it has a higher quality of drug dealer. The local ‘tuff yoof’ at Slades in my experience can be a bit of a pain in the arse, riding annoying mini motorbikes and sometimes being disrespectful to other park users. At Winton Rec though, they mainly seem to sit on the benches at the top of the Oval and get a bit stoned, so aren’t a bother to anyone. Fair play to them I say.