Summer Sports - Cricket
Outfield and square at the Chelmsford Ground in mid-November
quarters: the clubs who want results and satisfied paying customers, the paying public who simply want to see cricket, the ECB who want up- to-standard pitches”
pressure from all “We all get As we are chatting, Stuart gets a call
from Keith Exton, Glamorgan’s Head Groundsman, emphasising the togetherness there is between county groundsmen. “We all get pressure from all quarters: the clubs who want results and satisfied paying customers, the paying public who simply want to see cricket, the ECB who want up-to-standard pitches.” “The pressure, of course, is on the
umpires to get play under way, and the relationship between us and them as professionals has never been stronger. The pitch belongs to them from the toss, but they rely on us for local knowledge, and decisions to play or not, more than ever, are in the fullest consultation with head groundsman. We are very much at the sharp end of what are the commercial as well as sporting aspects of the game at county level. Groundsmen and umpires and very much colleagues in arms, especially as media scrutiny gets keener. Hawkeye and throw-away observations from the commentary box never tell the whole story.” “Keith at the SWALEC and Matt
Merchant at Old Trafford usually suffer the worst weather, although strangely this year Essex, statistically often the driest of cricket counties, did fare worse than Glamorgan, losing five whole Championship days to rain. We lost more whole days this year than in all of my previous twenty years here, so it was a remarkably tough season,” said Stuart. The margins county clubs have to work
A stump camera ‘patch’, part of pitch surrounds now at many a county ground
76 PC DECEMBER/JANUARY 2013
on are tighter than ever, the more so since the introduction of Twenty20. Losing one of these games can cost a county between £60,000 and £70,000. Essex fared well here last season and managed to skirt around the weather. They and Durham lost not a single Twenty20 ball to conditions. Stuart was ‘elected’ chairman of the
county groundsmen ten years ago. They hold a meeting each year, recently during BTME. The next one is again going to be held at Harrogate. An agenda of topical issues is set. One of the hot topics in recent times has been the heavy roller ban. Stuart and his counterparts had a hard fight pushing this into the regulations. After these annual meetings, they have a get-together with the ECB to discuss issues generally and regulations in particular. There’s no doubt the relationship between them and cricket’s governing body has come a long way in the past few years.
“In the past, many’s the time we have been at loggerheads, but not any more. There is a much better working relationship with the ECB. What we’ve tried to do as a group of professionals is make sure we get our point across, and I think we’ve made good progress here,” said Stuart. “The roller taking the pace out of and killing pitches was our collective view, and the subsequent ban means we have been listened to, which is very satisfactory. We are a loose body but, nevertheless, one that has some clout at last.” The Cricket Writers Award can only
strengthen the profile of groundsmen in the game. They each have different sets of problems, but there is much that links them.
“In club cricket, everyone wants to play on a belter - a shirtfront. That isn’t always the case at first class level, and that is a huge pressure on us county groundsmen,” said Stuart. “Everyone in the game wants their say on pitch matters, but it’s us that have to do the work. Treading that fine line between bowling and batting attributes, especially for 40 and 20 over games, is a skill in itself, as well as battling to get a game on in poor weather.”
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