Summer Sports - Cricket Wood’s work ...
Pitchcare: What’s your current role at the ECB?
Chris Wood: I am Pitches Consultant for the ECB, Inspector of Pitches for International, Test and County monitoring, Technical Advisor to pitch panels whenever convened, A member of the Pitches Research Group and I have a duty to monitor the recreational game. I am involved here at the England National Performance Centre as well.
PC: What is the role of the performance centre?
CW: It’s a national academy in reality. It’s where the England team and the Lions train. The facilities at the indoor school are state of the art; they have player analysis computer/video banks and all sorts of technology. All the performance skill sets and player conditioning for the England and Lions tour parties are based here, and they use the facilities in the summer as well, including the full senior England squad to train, usually when they are playing at Trent Bridge.
PC: How did the marquee project come about?
CW: Well, in 2009, I was asked by another group that I sit on - The England Equipment and Management Group - if we had the technology to utilise the outdoor facilities for practice out of season, i.e. in the winter months. I said I would be lying if I said there wasn’t, but that we needed to investigate further. My initial thought was a sort of air blown hall with a semi-rigid structure. This proved too costly at the time, and there were also light issues, so we put it on the shelf for two years until Stuart Kerrison at Essex took a punt and found a marquee company. As soon as I saw it, I thought that is where we need to go.
PC: What prompted you to start the project then?
CW: I think it was when we first utilised two goalmouth lighting rigs at Trent Bridge. It was another punt that I took; the pitch just wasn’t drying, from my fist visit to the second. We were only a couple of days out from a Test Match and the Notts CCC Chief Executive at the time, called me in with Head Groundman, Steve Birks, and asked if there was any technology which could be used to dry out their pitches. I said we could use fans, but the timescale wasn’t right.
So I rang up my colleague Darren Baldwin, the Head Groundsman at Spurs, and asked him whether or not their lighting rigs throw out heat, and he said yes, about five degrees, and they always have to water their goalmouths now. So Darren, bless him, who was on the training ground when I spoke to
“So here we are, just past Guy Fawkes Night, and we are able to get full outdoor facilities with a spinning net and a pace net, which they can't replicate indoors”
Close inspection of the kneeling kind l-r: Will Relf, Steve Birks (Trent Bridge), Gary Barwell (Edgbaston), Chris Wood and Vic Demain (hidden - Trent Bridge)
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