Summer Sports - Cricket
“
I love the game, but could never play it because I’m as blind as a bat. Not exactly the next best thing, but looking after pitches gets you really close to the action
Pre-match warm up. To the right of the pavilion is the Bluemantle stand, built on the site of the original pavilion destroyed by Suffragette arson
Rugby Union loose-head prop and, later, in the National League for Hull Ionians It was as a groundsman at Sunderland Rugby Club, a grassed multi sport facility winter and summer, where he got his first taste of county outground work. In the early nineties, Durham County Cricket Club was making its first steps into 1st class cricket and it was pre-Riverside days. It used the venue for 2nd eleven fixtures at this time and Jon worked under Sunderland Cricket Club head groundsman Bert Boston, who he regards as his mentor to this day. “His approach to cricket was absolutely
fantastic. He taught me how to do motties and helped me realise their importance when it comes to loam compatibility. I’ve always set great store by this as essential in getting quality pitches.” At thirty-one, he moved south - relatively
speaking - to Hymers College, an independent school in Hull, where he was head groundsman, in charge of winter and summer sports pitches, and woodland management. Jon’s feeling for cricket grew and it began to shape his career. “I love the game, but could never play it
because I’m as blind as a bat,” he said with a wry smile. “Not exactly the next best thing, but looking after pitches gets you really close to the action and that’s where I like to be.” He moved back to Sunderland to look after
Wearmouth Cricket Club, where he was for eleven years, with a deliberate CV enhancing spell in landscape contracting to get experience in the ornamental and amenity side of groundsmanship. His next move was really south; to be
Grounds Manager at St Edmunds School in Canterbury. It was a telling move as it turned out.
He wasn't especially looking for another
Jon Buddington, Head Groundsman at the Nevill Ground, Tunbridge Wells
88 I PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2016
fresh challenge, but noticed online a job he couldn’t resist: Head Groundsman at a county outground and Sports Team Leader for Tunbridge Wells Council. His skills and experience ticked all the
boxes. Sodexo, brought in four years earlier on a ten-year contract to maintain all the
town’s outdoor facilities, thought so too and he was appointed. The contractor had done well for the town already in its outdoor image, securing the title of Best in Kent and a hat trick of gold medals at the annual South and South East in Bloom competition. It was now aiming to improve further the sports pitches in its jurisdiction. Sodexo's Contracts Manager, Dan Dibdin,
emphasised what they’d been aiming for in making the appointment. “We absolutely needed a high skills factor,
a professional that would give added value to the importance of the job, especially here at the Nevill Ground,” he said. Interestingly, he told me that the company
currently had a bid in place for managing the upkeep of Kent’s other outground at Beckenham. Pitch success at the Nevill, therefore, has an extra significance. Jon used remaining time in Canterbury
wisely, touching base with Kent CCC’s Director of Grounds, Simon Williamson. “Although Simon doesn’t have direct
involvement in pitch preparation for Tunbridge Wells Week, he had been a little nervous of things last year,” Jon said. “Once I’d been appointed by Sodexo to
look after the Nevill, I asked him if I could ‘shadow’ him at the St Lawrence for a couple of the Twenty20 fixtures there last summer. This was my first close up of 1st team county
Tunbridge Wells and Kent players benefit from the Nevill's all-weather nets
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