With Border Cricket’s domestic cricket season having recently concluded, Buffalo Park Cricket Ground in KuGompo City is set to start its facility renovations in April in preparation for the 2027 ICC World Cup.
Floodlights, the scoreboard, outfield sprinklers, the drainage system, training nets and the media centre are among the areas that will be upgraded while extra pitches on the square are being created.
This was revealed to Daily Dispatch by Border Cricket CEO Sean Beyer.
“We are going to run flat out during the off-season; we are hoping to get everything done by October before the new cricket season starts,” Beyer said.
He said the Buffalo City Metro was going to assist with the installation of new floodlights at the ground, with that being the top priority.
The publication previously reported the metro had thrown weight of R20m to upgrade Buffalo Park Cricket Stadium.
The metro said the global marquee cricket event would attract thousands of international visitors, players and media professionals, with significant economic and cultural benefits.
The provincial government had said they estimated that more than 40,000 people would visit the province for the World Cup, injecting R800m into the economy.
Beyer said the provincial department of sport is going to assist with the setup of the new scoreboard, with Beyer adding that the existing one is “very outdated”.
During his recent budget speech, finance MEC Mlungisi Mvoko said the Eastern Cape government committed a R5.8m investment towards renovations of the facility.
“We will have two scoreboards instead of one; there will be a new one in the position of the existing one and a new one in the opposite end in the grass banks. So that spectators are able to see the score on both sides of the field,” Beyer said.
“Every game we always hope that the scoreboard won’t switch off; it is old technology because we got it in 2015 from the Wanderers in Johannesburg,” he said.
The World Cup is scheduled to be hosted across several South African cities, as well as Namibia and Zimbabwe, between September and November 2027.
Buffalo Park last hosted the showpiece in 2003.
In that edition, it hosted three games.
Beyer was hopeful that they are going to get more than that this time around.
The ICC is yet to announce the groups and fixtures for the tournament.
He allayed public fear that the ground will host “small countries“.
“Unlike the T20 World Cup, where they have the smaller countries involved, with the 50-over edition that is coming here, they focus more on the 10 big countries. You don’t have small countries in that case,” Beyer said.
“Namibia and Zimbabwe will be playing at home, so the small ones are the West Indies, for example, which are not small. Then you will have your Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, so whoever is coming here, we are going to have world-class players,” he said.
To build up excitement for the World Cup in Buffalo City, Cricket SA has included Buffalo Park in their calendar for 2026 and 2027.
The KuGompo City ground will stage the Proteas’ opening ODI of three against Bangladesh on December 1.
As trial for Border Cricket for the senior men’s showpiece, they were custodians of the U19 World Cup in 2024.
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