“You can now see where the grass is stronger in the tine holes, so I’m expecting my methods to have made an improvement. Time will tell”
Hammer time! I
arrived at Ilminster Recreation Ground to find John Pallister, Head Groundsman of Ilminster Cricket Club, knelt over an ageing Ransomes Auto Certes with a
hammer. “Height adjustment is broken,” came a muffled voice. “I’m not surprised,” was my initial thought! A few tweaks and thumps later and the adjustment had been made. An outstretched hand greeted me; “Peter from Pitchcare, I presume?”
I was alerted to the club by a news item
carried on the Pitchcare website about vandalism to one of the club’s sight screens, and the comments made by John and the club’s chairman, Jim Sainsbury; “fuelled by alcohol”; “simple minded individual”; “mindless vandalism a form of recreation”; “latest in a string of vandalism incidents” etc. So, I went to find out why a small, rural town in Somerset should be suffering, and what steps the club and the authorities were taking to resolve the issues.
John moved to Ilminster seven years ago, after being “retired through ill health” from his position as Head Gardener with Lymington Town Council in the New Forest. “At the time, I had a mortgage, so my wife and I decided to move west to buy a property that would leave us mortgage free,” explains John. “One that fitted the bill was here in Ilminster.”
So, how did he end up becoming the
town’s cricket groundsman? “I was walking past the ground one mid August evening when I noticed a couple of people working on the square. I had always thought that it was a council run facility, but council workers don’t work in the evenings! So, I popped over to ask for a fixture list. ‘Why do you want one of those, there’s only a couple of games left?’ came the reply. I explained that I wanted the secretary’s telephone number so that I could offer my services. To cut a long story short, they bit my arm off.” John had previously been head
New net facilities are being installed by Exclusive Leisure
groundsman at Pywell Cricket Club, just a couple of miles outside Lymington, a job he did on a voluntary basis for twenty-one years, so his experience was welcomed by the Ilminster committee. The recreation ground is split into
three distinct areas; a football pitch and two cricket ovals, plus a couple of tarmacadam tennis courts and mini grass football pitches. The area is surrounded by modern houses, yet some of the views across the adjoining countryside, and to the town on the hill, are splendid. The area is popular with dog walkers. The football pitch, cricket outfields and other grass areas are cut by the council, leaving John to concentrate on the squares.
The main square has fourteen tracks. The centre five are reserved for the 1st XI, the end three for juniors, evening matches and practice, and the remainder for the 2nd XI. “It was, previously, the Ilminster Grammar School playing field, and is owned by the Ilminster Education Foundation so, if we want to do any development on the ground we have to get permission from them and from the council,” explains John. The second square, in Britten’s Field, has six tracks and is used by the 3rd and 4th XI.
Both squares are built from Kaloam,
except for one track on the main square which is Ongar. “I inherited a square that was ‘low and slow’,” says John. “I was told that the Ongar strip, now known as the ‘hard strip’, had been put in to try and rectify the problem. It was dug out to a depth of nine inches and filled with the loam. I did explain that they could have done that completely differently, and achieved so much more, with that amount of loam.” “However, it is now my task to improve
the rest of the square. There is, or was, a break just 1.5” down, which took all the life out of the ball. So, last year, I began the task of punching through the break, using a Groundsman 345, off the
Somerset Cricket Association (SCA) trailer, and back filling with Kaloam. The damn thing arrived with worn tines and would only penetrate two inches, so I had to replace those. I eventually managed to get down about six inches with the new tines!” “You can now see where the grass is
stronger in the tine holes, so I’m expecting my methods to have made an improvement. Time will tell.” John gleans his advice from his fellow
groundsmen on the SCA and from Gordon Gill, who is well known to Pitchcare members for his sound advice on the Pitchcare message board; “he never stops talking though,” says John with a smile.
Separating the football pitch from the main cricket oval is the groundsman’s workshop, and a clubhouse affectionately known as ‘the shed’. “I won’t take you in there, it’s well past it’s sell-by-date but we are hoping to redevelop it in the not too distant future,”
laughs John. However, the shed generates, during the cricket season, a profit of around £12,000, which is all poughed back into the cricket club. A similar
amount is
raised by the football club during their season. This year, much of that profit is being spent on new net facilities consisting of two artificial strips. These are being installed by Exclusive Leisure Ltd. of Leicester, alongside the cricket pavilion.
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