Summer Sports - Cricket
“One of the club’s greatest assets is our knowledgeable and dedicated Groundsman, Eddy Bayton, who has made the wicket one of the best in the league.” So states the website of Torrisholme Cricket Club. Situated on the outskirts of Morecambe in Lancashire, the club is rare in promoting the skills of its groundsman so openly and enthusiastically.
Here, Eddy explains how he came to be at the club and how he has raised the standard of the pitches
fter achieving a degree in Biological Science and Maths, Eddy Bayton began his career working in the paper industry. “I found it increasingly difficult to work for other people, possibly because I am rather opinionated and reported to two directors who did not always see eye to eye,” he states openly. With a friend, he set up a small manufacturing business making educational equipment, jigsaws, one-off joinery commissions and exhibition stand designs. “This did well, for five or six years, as a partnership, but I decided to sell my half and branch out into domestic joinery on my own, which I still enjoy greatly, especially the one-off elements like doors and windows of odd shapes and sizes.” “Along with some friends, I set up a Sunday touring cricket team in 1986 which is still going today. One of our
A
players was involved with Torrisholme on Saturdays and he recommended me to them when their groundsman retired, knowing I had a good knowledge of cricket, but also soil science, plant management and some mechanical aptitude. I have been a part time groundsman ever since. My degree has served me well, but not in the way I expected,” explains Eddy. “In recent years, I have taken the ECB level 1 and 2 courses in cricket preparation and hold appropriate spraying qualifications. Fifty years of tinkering with anything mechanical has helped, and it would be unfair not to mention the good relationships with other groundsmen locally that has also taught me a lot. I feel communication and support is important in, what can be, quite a lonely profession at times.” “My father was a good spinner for the London Hospitals in the late 1940s and a
Eddy Bayton Torrisholme CC
Eddy on an upward spiral
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