Basin Reserve
Encyclopedia : B : BA : BAS : Basin Reserve
Basin Reserve is a cricket ground in Wellington, New Zealand used for staging Test, first-class and one-day cricket.
The ground is located two km south of the CBD, at the foot of Mount Victoria. Government House is to the south of the Basin, across the street.
The area that is now Basin Reserve was originally a lake (known as the Basin Lake), and there were plans to connect it to the sea by a canal to make it an alternative inner city harbour, but an earthquake in 1855 uplifted the area nearly 1.8 m and turned the lake into a swamp. The swamp was drained and by 1866 the Basin Reserve became Wellington's official cricket ground.
The first Test match played at the ground was between New Zealand and England, beginning 24 January 1930. One-day international cricket has also been played at the Basin: regularly until 1999, after which it moved to the larger crowd capacity Westpac Stadium on the other side of Wellington. In what may be a one-off occasion, it returned during the Australian Tour in 2005 following a decision that the pitch at Hamilton's Westpac Park was unfit for cricket.
In addition to cricket, other sports have also used the Basin, including rugby, a rugby league test match, and exhibition Australian rules football matches.
One of the incidental quirks of the Basin is that it acts as reputedly the largest traffic island in the southern hemisphere.
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