Horsham Festival week heralds peak attendances at the picturesque ground - more than 4,000 a day typically roll up to line the boundary and throng the clubhouse
and a thriving junior section, with ages from under 9s to under 16s. Clearly this is no sleepy hollow of cricket. With the likes of renowned cricketing writer and TMS broadcaster, Christopher Martin Jenkins, as members, the club’s performance at all levels no doubt comes under constant scrutiny.
That’s not the whole story though, and Horsham Cricket & Sports Club can boast more than 1,000 members across cricket, hockey, squash and tennis sections, with players in those groups competing at county, national and international level. Horsham Lawn Tennis Club, meanwhile, is a long-established and thriving arm that appeals to all standards, from social and family play to competitive leagues. Founded in the late 19th century, it
grew considerably after the Second World War under the presidency of Col WJ Legg OBE and his successor as Wimbledon Referee, Capt Mike Gibson. In the early 1970s the constituent sports and social sections came together to create a parent club to oversee the running of the whole club. Horsham Festival week heralds peak attendances at the picturesque ground - more than 4,000 a day typically roll up to line the boundary and throng the clubhouse.
This year sees Sussex play Derbyshire on 18-21 August and Somerset on the 22nd. And there’s Ladies Day on the 25th, when Horsham hosts Glamorgan for a 40-over Division 1 floodlit match.
The Festival typifies the function of the club as somewhere that has something to offer everyone, as a community and family-orientated hub bringing positive elements to Horsham by encouraging development in sports from a young age. The ground hit the headlines a few years ago for all the wrong reasons, however, when it lost its slot as an outground for county first-team games. “The club was between groundsmen then,” Roger explains. “It was at the beginning of May, a key time in the cricketing year, and the contractor brought in to look after things took it into his head to scarify the surface in two different directions, with disastrous consequences. Sussex went back to Hove and the club sued the contractor.”
By 2006 though, everything was back to normal and Horsham was restored to its
rightful place, alongside Arundel, as a Sussex outground. Roger runs groundsmanship at the club under contract and is now in his fifth year in charge. As boss of Southern Sportsground Services - the business he has headed for twenty years, assisted by his two sons Ben and Ollie - he is on site four and half days a week and Saturday mornings. When not at Horsham, he’s busy looking after Purley, Sutton and Cheam cricket clubs, as well as East Grinstead and the Old Whitgiftians
ground near Croydon.
Not content with those tasks however, Roger also works as an ECB pitch adviser for Surrey, so time management for the 63-year old is obviously one of his key skill sets. Sussex
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