PARTS of Pontcanna Fields shut after the National Eisteddfod was held there in 2008 have reopened – nearly two years after they were first closed.

Cardiff council has spent around £390,000 restoring the cricket and football pitches following the festival held in August 2008.

Teams were initially told the grounds would be ready in time for the 2009 cricket season. Delays meant many had to find alternative grounds, putting pressure on other pitches.

However, drainage problems and a legacy of the hardcore laid for the Eisteddfod caused the area to flood, preventing the work from being completed as planned.

Users of the Grade II-listed heritage parkland are hoping the problems are now over.

Cardiff Civic Society chairman Peter Cox said: “It’s been a very long time and one has to hope they’ve done a good job.”

Paul O’Sullivan, secretary of Cardiff Midweek Cricket League, said teams would be returning to the pitches in Pontcanna Fields for the first time next Tuesday.

He said: “We’ve waited years for new pitches in Cardiff. We hope everything is going to be good this summer.

“We’ve been shoved from pillar to post and the pitches haven’t been in the best of condition.

“Pontcanna and Blackweir have always been our home turf until the Eisteddfod. They promised to get it all back to normal, so hopefully they will have.”

A Cardiff council spokesman said: “The council is committed to investing in its sports provision across the city and is delighted to bring Pontcanna Fields back into play for the 2010 cricket season.

“No doubt cricket users will be extremely pleased with the new playing surfaces.

“As well as pitches in Pontcanna Fields, the council has also improved the cricket table at Llandaff, which will also be brought back into play next month.”

Mr O’Sullivan said the council had promised the Llandaff pitches would be ready for the start of the season and that council officers had not called to warn him of delays.

He said: “It’s causing me a heck of a lot of problems with match organising.”

Mr Cox said the closure of part of Pontcanna Fields had put pressure on other green spaces in the city.

He said: “Everyone who would have walked their dog there had to go somewhere elsewhere. People looking for picnic places had to move to, say, Llandaff Fields. Before, they’d be spread more thinly.

“It became quite competitive to get a good space for a game of rounders.

“I don’t think any of us realised how intensively the area was used. Last summer and the summer before the other parts of the park were extremely busy and much less pleasant to use.”

Mr Cox said the Eisteddfod should not return to Pontcanna Fields in future.

“There’s considerable questions about whether the council should be using the parks for these money-making events,” he said. “It’s just entirely unsuitable. There are lots of other sites with good access to the city.”