IMAGES TAKEN NEAR TO
Eaton Road, HOVE, BN3 3AN

The members' pavilion on the western side of the County Ground. (Mystery to me why anyone would want to watch cricket from the sides and not the ends.)

The Pavilion and members' area before the start of the first day of the Sussex-Nottinghamshire County Championship match. The steps lead down from the players' pavilion.

The match ball had gone out of shape. A box of appropriate replacements had been brought out and umpire Peter Willey was choosing one, watched by the Sussex fielder Luke Wright. The Indoor School and Players' Pavilion is in the background, with houses on Cromwell Road behind it. The Members' Pavilion is to the left.

The umpires are walking out and spectators returning to their seats after tea on the second day of the Sussex-Nottinghamshire match. The picture is taken from the new stand in the south-west of the ground, looking towards the pavilion and the houses and flats on Cromwell Road. The ice cream vans did well on a hot May day.

Looking from the Sharks stand towards the Pavilion.

It was the balmy, sunlit end of the 2017 first-class cricket season and also the end of the twenty-year career of Nottinghamshire's wicketkeeper-batsman and captain, Chris Read. The match had just ended as the draw Notts needed to secure promotion to Division 1 of the County Championship (they had also won both one-day competitions), something Read had done much to bring about, scoring 124 (his 26th first-class century) the previous day. On behalf of Sussex CCC Keith Greenfield presented Read with a framed print of the scorecards of his first and last County matches, both of which had been played at Hove. Players and staffs of both counties and an emotional crowd applauded Read and took photos of the occasion. (The statistically-minded can find more about Chris Read here: http://www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/19346.html .)

The house surrounded by scaffolding and reflecting the late afternoon sun is being restored after a major fire on the premises the previous weekend. The white building to the left is the clock for the cricket ground. The flats on the northern perimeter have an excellent view of the cricket and are highly sought after.

Heavy overnight rain delayed the start of the final County Championship match of the 2017 season. Supporters of Sussex and Nottinghamshire waited patiently in warm late-September sunshine for play to begin and the game to meander amiably towards a draw. This is the grassy bank at the Cromwell Road End of the ground, with the practice nets and the players' pavilion in the background.