Pre-season message from Chair

After a long winter, the wait is finally over! This Friday marks the beginning of what promises to be a spectacular season for Surrey Cricket and the Kia Oval.

Winning domestic trophies and competing for honours

• The men’s team, which has raised the bar of the domestic game and clinched three County Championships in the last four seasons, is hungry to reclaim the crown.
• The T20 squad, who have reached the Finals Day twice in the last three years, are more eager than ever to chase the Vitality Blast trophy that has alluded them.
• Our women’s team heads into the summer with incredible momentum, looking to secure back-to-back Vitality Blast titles after that unforgettable day at the Kia Oval last July.
• With the addition of outstanding talents such as Maitlan Brown and Laura Harris, the squad is perfectly positioned to turn last year’s One Day Cup semi-final run and T20 trophy into more silverware.
• 2026 will also see us launch our new MI London teams, in partnership with Reliance. Both teams, recently secured at the auction, have a strong Surrey core from both a playing and coaching perspective, to go with a terrific global presence, and will aim to build on the Oval Invincibles’ success of winning five titles in five years.

Developing Surrey cricketers for England

• A significant objective for us is to develop our players and be a gateway to England.
• We have been leading the way by some distance in producing international-class cricketers for the men’s national side, providing 12 Test Match debutants for England over the last decade.
• We are also extremely proud to now have 10 Surrey women currently involved in the England programmes and training camps.

Playing on the best pitch in the land

• What makes the Kia Oval exceptional is the privilege of having the best playing surface in the land. Our grounds team is truly excellent, and they have rightfully won many awards for the quality of our pitches and outfield. Huge credit to the team.
• The pitches offer the perfect balance between bat and ball, as was exemplified last summer in what was one of the finest Test Matches of this century, as well as during the absorbing title-decider against Notts, which felt like a Test Match in its own right.

Maintaining a world-class venue

• One of our greatest assets is our ground, and it takes a serious amount of upkeep to ensure we maintain the facilities at a world-class level. We have embarked on a number of significant development projects over the years and will continue to invest in the ground.
• To call out a few of those, we have recently replaced all the floodlights with state-of-the-art LED lights, not only improving our playing surface lighting but also reducing our power consumption by 40%.
• Our changing rooms were in desperate need of an upgrade, and we now have some of the highest-quality men’s and women’s change-room facilities in the country.
• We have taken on several other refurbishments, and to name a few, the Bedser 4th floor, a number of rooms in the JM Finn stand, the bathroom facilities on the concourse, and improved power supply to the ground. All of these improvements will drive our MDEX (Match Day Experience) scores above the 8+ point.

Growing the game

• Red ball cricket is core to everything we do here, and we were delighted to welcome nearly 85,000 spectators to the County Championship in 2025, setting a 21st-century record.
• The aim this summer is to reach a new high and potentially double our attendance from what it was five years ago.
• Members are the bedrock of our success, and we are blessed to have the largest membership in county cricket, which is looking set to surpass an unprecedented 22,000 in 2026.
• Surrey’s pull for people comes from the sheer quality of the package on offer, the outstanding value for money, and the simple fact that we are eager to grow the game and open our doors for all.
• The presence of Surrey supporters is not just growing in the ground but also digitally, with Surrey TV receiving over 5m views of our free-to-view broadcast on YouTube.
• The Club’s following on social media channels is multiplying rapidly too, with over 1.25m supporters.

Providing cricket across Surrey and South London

• In 2025, the Surrey Cricket Foundation looked after the largest centrally run club league in the country, where over 25,000 players participated.
• They offered coaching sessions to more than 18,000 young people – a 17% rise compared to 2024.
• We were a leading county for women’s and girls’ cricket, with over 6,300 players taking part.
• An important project for the Foundation this summer has been integrating the women’s leagues into the Surrey Cricket Championship for 2026, meaning from now on, women and men will be playing under the same banner and on the same platform, moving us closer towards our vision for gender parity across all cricket.

Making cricket more inclusive

• The Surrey Academy Cricket Scholars programme, which was launched in 2023 with three partner schools and now works with over 12 schools, allowed hundreds of state school students to complete their sixth form studies whilst getting access to high-quality cricket coaching, strength and conditioning training, and Surrey Cricket employability workshops.
• The brilliant Ben Hollioake Learning Centre will be celebrating its 20th anniversary this season and continues to inspire hundreds of local school children who visit for weekly sessions.
• The ACE Programme, which the Club helped launch in 2020 and continues to support, is now an independent charity and is carrying out great work by building grassroots cricket programmes and developing talent pathways in targeted black communities and cities across the UK. A proud moment was seeing Troy Henry become the first male player to come up into professional cricket through the programme.

Remembering Thorpey

• Following the tragic passing of Surrey and England legend Graham Thorpe, the club, alongside his family and the mental health charity Mind, created ‘A Day for Thorpey’. The final Test of the summer at the Kia Oval between England and India saw a capacity crowd come out and support our Surrey legend, and that picture of white headbands around the ground and Joe Root’s reveal of that iconic image was incredibly moving. A poignant moment for us all.
• ‘A Day for Thorpey’ was not only to raise funds for the charity Mind, but also to raise awareness of mental health issues. On the back of that, an initiative called ‘Bat and Chat’ was launched, and we were very proud to have hosted one of the first sessions at the Kia Oval, run by none other than Thorpey’s own son, Henry.