Summer Sports - Cricket
Nigel Gray has been at Hampshire County Cricket Club for over twenty years. This year, the club have given him a testimonial, only the third groundsman in their long history to be awarded the honour.
Simon Walter, Senior Sports Reporter at the Southern Daily Echo, caught up with him to chart his career from his early days at the Northland’s Road ground to becoming the newest provider of a Test wicket
from their old home at Northlands Road, the 59-year-old has been one of the county’s most recognisable characters for more than two decades. Now in his twenty-third season, he
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recently launched his well-deserved testimonial, with patron Shane Warne, at The Ageas Bowl, fittingly at the end of the second day’s play against Leicestershire - the county of his birth. It says something for the respect in which he is held that he is only the third groundsman in Hampshire cricket history to be awarded a testimonial, following in the footsteps of Jesse Hopkins (1922) and Ernie Knights (1975).
Having moved south with his family aged six, Gray became an adopted son of Hampshire. He started life with the county back in 1989. After graduating from Keele University with a geography degree and, whilst working on pitches at Taunton’s College,
here have been more ups than downs in the career of long- serving Hampshire County Cricket Club’s Head Groundsman, Nigel Gray. One of the few survivors
Upper Shirley in Southampton for Hampshire County Council, Nigel was ‘spotted’ by two of Hampshire’s other Old Tauntonians - chief executive Tony Baker and cricket committee chairman Charlie Knott.
He soon became part of the fabric of Northlands Road and even lived there during the 1990s, next to the nets where the likes of Malcolm Marshall and Robin Smith honed their skills. Within two years of being appointed assistant to Tom Flintoft, he was promoted to head groundsman when his colleague returned to his native north east to work on Durham’s new Riverside Ground at Chester-le-Street. Nigel’s arrival coincided with one of the most successful periods in Hampshire’s history with the side, captained by Mark Nicholas, having already won the 1988 Benson & Hedges Cup. Nicholas’s team then added the Natwest Trophy in 1991, before lifting the B&H again the following year. Nigel had a growing trophy cabinet of his own during the 1990s, winning two ECB groundsman of the year awards. “Northlands Road had a good
The ups and downs of Hampshire’s groundsman
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