from November until the end of February. It can be 10°C in the day time and below freezing at night.” “Because the natural grasses used for


cricket pitches in India are of the Cynodon varieties, that can cope with the summer heat, the cold temperatures send them into dormancy for that period - there is absolutely no re-growth. Cricket is played in India between October and April to avoid the worst of the heat and to make the most of the dry season,” he said. Venues in Bangalore and Chennai have a different monsoon period to the rest of India. They are more like the Sri Lankan grounds. Meanwhile, Kolkata has the same seasons as Bangladesh. “All these factors have to be considered when planning work schedules. This is also a factor in other large countries, such as Australia, where the weather differs from Perth to Brisbane and Sydney, and also South Africa with the variations between the Cape, the High Veldt and the other costal venues,” Andy said.


Andy’s knowledge of different pitches and climates is almost unparalleled. He seems as though he was born to do this job. So, it is a surprise to learn that he fell into the profession almost by accident.


“I come from a farming background in


“To prepare a good pitch, many aspects of turf management need to be brought together. Of these, experience, hard work, commonsense, perseverance, luck and good weather are the most important”


66


Essex and the club I played for, Rankins CC, had its own ground which the players had to look after in conjunction with the ground’s owner, Donald Rankin. As I could drive a tractor, I helped out by initially cutting the outfield. After a while, I became more interested in the preparation of the pitches and progressed from there,” he said. He left school and started training to be a chef at technical college, until he realised how much the evening and weekend work would interfere with playing cricket, soccer and rugby. “When the course was completed, I decided that I did not want to take up catering as a profession - I wasn’t very good anyway! I managed to get a job with the local council in the parks


department, preparing all sorts of sports surfaces over a five-year period, which gave me a good grounding,” he said. His rise to prominence thereafter was dramatic. He worked at Lord’s, Lansdowne Road and The Oval, before enjoying a ten year stretch as Essex head groundsman at Chelmsford. After that, he was Warwickshire head groundsman, at Edgbaston, for three years. While at Edgbaston, Atkinson and his fellow Test groundsmen were called to a secret meeting with the ECB and told by Donald Carr, then the pitches overseer, that the England strategists required dry, turning pitches with not too much grass for the 1993 Ashes series.


Andy was uncomfortable about the idea of not producing the best pitch he could, and recalls the shrewd Ron Alsopp, then head groundsman at Trent Bridge, saying out of the corner of his mouth: “Haven’t they heard of Shane Warne?” Not long afterwards, everyone had heard of Warne, he produced his ‘Ball of The Century’ to bowl an aghast Mike Gatting in the first Test of a terrible summer for English cricket. Warne went on to take thirty-four wickets in the series, on pitches supposed to help English spinners!


Andy left Edgbaston that year, and


furthered his education by moving to sunnier climes as head groundsman at the Newlands ground in South Africa. Following that, he stayed in South Africa as turf manager for three years at the Wanderers Stadium. Finally, he became freelance and worked at Centurion Park, Pretoria, as a private contractor for three years.


His work at Test grounds in South


Africa, and in Africa’s hot conditions, was a good grounding for his next job with the ICC, from 1998.


Despite having to travel all over the world for the ICC, which takes him away from his family, he has never lost his passion for the job.


“It is a good feeling to produce a good pitch and to be complimented on it, but the art of preparing pitches is not an exact science, due to the need to


Centre wicket in 2005. Also shown are NSC superintendent ,Trevor Madeiros, and veteran local groundsman, Sheridan Raynor


Andy Atkinson gets to grips with the controversial National Sports


Image © The Royal Gazette, Bermuda


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