Author name: Mark Haworth

Well, now back from our weekend away watching the T20 finals down at the Rose Bowl in Southampton.

An excellent drive down there, we set off at 5.30am and were in the car park four hours fifteen minutes later. We’ve never been there before, and must comment from the outset it’s a fantastic spectator venue, even though they’re still building bits of it. Once complete, it’ll be up there and even surpass some of the more “traditional” cricket grounds.

But now for the gripe(s). Two really, one the timing of the games. Trying to squeeze two semi finals and the final into one day is always going to be tricky. So from that point of view, starting at 11.30am isn’t going to get you off to the best start. By the time it was all done, it was damn near 11pm. Way too late in my opinion. I understand it’s right to have all those games on one, day, but surely start a little earlier? There were families there with young kids and it was clear some of them needed to get off earlier than 11pm. And number two, although it’s only a short term problem I believe, is to address the parking situation. There’s no parking near the ground at all, you have to park miles away and get the park’n’ride in. Trying to ferry nigh on 25,000 people away at the end of the last match, even though there were loads of buses around is always going to take a while. For us it took nearly 1.5 hours, and that’s just to get to the car.

All that said, I’d go back, I just hope that next time, it’s a little quicker on the transport front.

A great day of cricket too, just a pity that Lancashire weren’t there.

M.