Summer Sports - Cricket
Looking a picture, the Chelmsford ground in mid-November
accepted took the form of a donation to Perrenial, the charity that helps needy former groundsmen or gardeners. In the twenty years of this award, the Sri Lankan team in 1996 are the only group to have won it: the others are pretty much a Who’s Who of the game’s great and good. This year’s award was, therefore, different and rather special. Speaking after the 2012 Cricket
Writers Club Awards dinner in London, Peter Smith’s widow Joan said: “My husband was always a great admirer of the work that was put in all over the country to maintain the cricket grounds used by counties, ensuring cricket could be played within reach of as many people as possible. I can honestly say he would have been very pleased to know an award in his name would be honouring groundsmen, particularly in the sort of
trying summer we have had this year.” The torrid conditions that faced our national summer game last season were the worst since 1912. According to The Cricketer magazine, however, it cannot be said categorically that it caused the biggest loss of playing time in a season, since there are no actual records of down-time due to weather for the whole of this time, but it must have been close. Records have been kept since the County Championship was split into two divisions in 2000, and 2012 easily tops this with 890 hours playing time lost. Figures issued by The Cricketer show, for example, that Yorkshire lost a staggering 36 percent of potential playing time in the LV County Championship Division Two. Over 138 hours out of a possible 384 never saw any action. Every county was badly affected, but Headingly et al
were the ‘raining champions’ you could say.
Conditions certainly had a detrimental affect on batting too, 2012 having one of the lowest number of first class averages topping 50. Only nine years since 1912 recorded fewer, and eight of these were in the days before covered pitches, not to mention bigger, stronger bats. This last season was a tough one all right, and groundsmen more than earned their corn.
“It is great for us all to be recognised in this way,” said Stuart. “I think, because this last season was such a shocker for weather, journalists saw us working our socks off on blotters doing our utmost to get games moving, and now have a new respect for what we do. It is, undoubtedly, the main reason we received the award.” DECEMBER/JANUARY 2013 PC 75
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