A multitude of sports have been played at the ground, including cricket, rugby, association football and hockey.

[1] The ground in its present location is said to have been made available following largescale demolition of defence works in the city during the 1870s.

[1][7] This first match was won by Cambridge University Past and Present by 20 runs, following an Australian batting collapse in which A. G. Steel took 5/24.

Wyatt's XI, on three occasions by Oxford and Cambridge Universities Past and Present and twice by the East of England.

[1] The amateur level football club Royal Artillery (Portsmouth) also played home matches there from 1894 until it was dissolved in 1899 following an FA Amateur Cup tie in which The Football Association expelled the club from the competition for alleged 'professionalism'; following this, it was decided to form a professional football club for the town, with the foundation of the present day Portsmouth F.C..[9] Hampshire regained first-class status in 1895 and were admitted to the expanded County Championship.

Hampshire played their first first-class match at the ground in thirteen years in that season when they played Leicestershire,[7] which Hampshire won by 3 wickets, due in part to a five wicket haul from Jimmy Wootton and an unbeaten half century from Francis Quinton.

[1] The grounds naval connection saw services players bought into the Hampshire team on occasion, including the future Admiral Alan Hotham.

It was during this time that under the leadership of Desmond Eagar and Colin Ingleby-Mackenzie that the Hampshire team was beginning to become a powerful force in the county game.

Coupled with the batting of Roy Marshall (who in five matches there in 1957 scored 549, an unbeaten record for the ground), Jimmy Gray and Henry Horton, and backed up with the bowling of Derek Shackleton, Victor Cannings and Malcolm Heath, Hampshire had a fairly successful period, finishing runners-up in 1958, before winning the County Championship for the first time in 1961, with Hampshire winning four of their five matches there in that season.

[14] Six first-class matches had been held there in 1962, before the schedule at the ground was reduced back to five, with the expansion of List A cricket with the Player's County League and John Player League, on average two or three List A matches were held there over the coming seasons.

[14] Hampshire were pressing for the Player's County League title in 1969, with a crowd of 8,000 watching their defeat to Essex.

[14] This decade also saw logistical problems for the ground, when at the Railway End trees were destroyed, whose removal interrupted the batsman line of sight.

1976 was also not without its problems, when a County Championship match against Yorkshire was interrupted by vandals who had attacked the pitch during the night.

[7] Hampshire played one match there in their 1986 John Player Special League winning run, defeating Warwickshire.

[7][18] Their final match there came days later in a List A fixture against Middlesex in the Norwich Union National League,[14] which Hampshire lost by 4 wickets.