The Oval, referred to as the Kia Oval due to a commercial sponsorship deal, is an international cricket ground in Kennington, in the London Borough of Lambeth. In the past it was also sometimes called the Kennington Oval. In past years it was officially named as the 'Fosters Oval', 'AMP Oval', 'Brit Insurance Oval', due to previous commercial sponsorship deals.

The Oval is the home ground of Surrey County Cricket Club, and also traditionally hosts the final Test match of each English summer season in late August or early September. The Oval was the first ground in the United Kingdom and second in the world (after the Melbourne Cricket Ground) to host Test cricket.

The nearest Tube station is Oval, but Vauxhall is only half a mile away.

In 1844, Kennington Oval was a market garden. The Oval was then (and still is) owned by the Duchy of Cornwall. Surrey County Cricket Club was set up in 1845. The Duchy was willing to grant a lease of the land for the purpose of a cricket ground, and, on 10 March 1845, the club signed a lease with the Otter Trustees, who held the land from the Duchy of Cornwall, 'to convert it into a subscription cricket ground', for 31 years at a rent of £120 per annum plus taxes (£20 more). The original contract for turfing the Oval cost £300; 10,000 grass turfs came from Tooting Common.

Rahul Sharad Dravid  pronunciation (help·info) (born 11 January 1973) is a former Indian cricketer and captain of the Indian Test and One Day International teams. Dravid was honoured as one of the top-five Wisden Cricketers of the Year in 2000. Dravid was also awarded the ICC Player of the Year and the Test Player of the Year at the inaugural awards ceremony held in 2004. Dravid also holds the record of having taken the most number of catches in Test matches. On 9 March 2012, he announced his retirement from international cricket.

On 7 August 2011 after getting a surprise call to play in ODI series against England he declared his retirement from One Day Internationals and T20.

Popularly hailed as "The Wall of Indian cricket", Dravid is regarded by many to be one of the greatest batsmen in the history of the game. Dravid holds multiple cricketing records. He is only the second player, after Sachin Tendulkar, to reach 13,000 runs in Test cricket. On 14 February 2007, he became the sixth player overall and the third Indian (after Sachin Tendulkar and Sourav Ganguly), to score 10,000 runs in ODI cricket in cricketing history. He is the first and only batsman to score a century in all ten Test playing nations. With more than 200 catches, Dravid currently holds the world record for the most number of catches in Test cricket. Dravid has also been involved in more than 80 century partnerships with 18 different partners and has been involved in 19 century partnerships with Sachin Tendulkar – a world record.

Kevin Peter Pietersen, MBE (born 27 June 1980) is a South African-born English cricketer. He is a right-handed batsman and occasional off spin bowler who plays for England, Surrey and the Delhi Daredevils. He was captain of the England Test and One Day International teams from 4 August 2008 to 7 January 2009 but resigned after just three Tests and nine One Day Internationals, following a dispute with England coach Peter Moores, who was sacked the same day. On 31 May 2012, Pietersen retired from all forms of international limited-overs cricket.

Pietersen was born in Pietermaritzburg, Natal Province, South Africa. He made his first-class debut for Natal in 1997 before moving to England after voicing his displeasure at the racial quota system in place in South Africa. His English mother gave Pietersen eligibility to play for England, and after serving a qualifying period of four years playing at county level, he was called up almost immediately into the national side. He made his international debut in the One Day International match against Zimbabwe in 2004, and his Test match debut in the 2005 Ashes series against Australia the following year. The England team's subsequent reliance on Pietersen since his debut resulted in only a single first-class appearance for Hampshire between 2005 and 2010. On 17 June 2010, Pietersen announced his wish to leave Hampshire . He subsequently joined Surrey on loan for the remainder of the 2010 English county cricket season after being dropped by England due to a poor run of form, before joining the club permanently from the 2011 season onwards.

Edgar Allan Poe (born Edgar Poe; January 19, 1809 – October 7, 1849) was an American author, poet, editor and literary critic, considered part of the American Romantic Movement. Best known for his tales of mystery and the macabre, Poe was one of the earliest American practitioners of the short story and is considered the inventor of the detective fiction genre. He is further credited with contributing to the emerging genre of science fiction. He was the first well-known American writer to try to earn a living through writing alone, resulting in a financially difficult life and career.

He was born as Edgar Poe in Boston, Massachusetts; he was orphaned young when his mother died shortly after his father abandoned the family. Poe was taken in by John and Frances Allan, of Richmond, Virginia, but they never formally adopted him. He attended the University of Virginia for one semester but left due to lack of money. After enlisting in the Army and later failing as an officer's cadet at West Point, Poe parted ways with the Allans. His publishing career began humbly, with an anonymous collection of poems, Tamerlane and Other Poems (1827), credited only to "a Bostonian".

Michael Anthony Holding (born 16 February 1954) is a former West Indian cricketer. One of the fastest bowlers ever to play Test cricket, he was nicknamed "Whispering Death" by umpires due to his quiet approach to the bowling crease. His bowling was smooth and very fast, and he used his height (6 ft 3 ¹⁄₂ in/1.918 m) to generate large amounts of bounce and zip off the pitch. He was part of the fearsome West Indian pace battery, together with Joel Garner, Andy Roberts, Sylvester Clarke, Colin Croft, Wayne Daniel and the late Malcolm Marshall that devastated batting line-ups in the world throughout the seventies and early eighties.

In June 1988 Holding was celebrated on the $2 Jamaican stamp alongside the Barbados Cricket Buckle.

During his First class cricket career, Holding played for Jamaica, Canterbury, Derbyshire, Lancashire and Tasmania.

Holding was the bowler in what is often described as "the greatest over in Test history", which he bowled in 1981 in Bridgetown to English batsman Geoff Boycott. The first five balls increased in pace, causing Boycott to have to react very rapidly to avoid being hit. The final ball saw Boycott clean bowled, to the great delight of the crowd.