Newlands Cricket Ground (known as PPC Newlands for sponsorship reasons) in Cape Town is a South African cricket ground. It is the home of the Cape Cobras, who play in the Sunfoil Series, Momentum 1 Day Cup and RamSlam Pro20 competitions. It is also a venue for Test matches, ODIs and T20Is. Newlands is regarded as one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world, being overlooked by Table Mountain and Devil's Peak. It is close to Newlands Stadium, which is a rugby union and football venue. The cricket ground opened in 1888.
The ground hosted its first Test match on 24 March 1889 when England defeated South Africa by an innings and 202 runs. As of January 2014, there have been 50 Test matches played at the ground of which South Africa has won 18, their opponents 22 and 10 which ended in a draw. The last team besides Australia to beat South Africa there was New Zealand, in January 1962 .
The first One Day International played at the ground was on 7 December 1992 when South Africa beat India by 6 wickets. As of January 2014, there have been 36 One Day Internationals played at the ground including five in the 2003 Cricket World Cup. South Africa has won 25 of its ODI games here and lost 5 (Pakistan being the most recent opposition victor in November 2013).
A cricket field consists of a large grassy ground on which the game of cricket is played; this is ostensibly an oval though most cricket grounds would more accurately be described either as a convex set or as a convex polygon with an infinite number of sides. Cricket grounds can be almost perfectly circular, elongated ovals or entirely irregular shapes with little or no symmetry – but they will have entirely curved boundaries, almost without exception. There are no fixed dimensions for the field but its diameter usually varies between 450 feet (137 m) and 500 feet (150 m). Cricket is unusual among major sports (along with Golf, Australian rules football and baseball) in that there is no official rule for a fixed-shape ground for professional games. On most grounds, a rope demarcates the perimeter of the field and is known as the boundary. Within the boundary and generally as close to the centre as possible will be the square which is an area of carefully prepared grass upon which cricket pitches can be prepared and marked for matches.