Summer Sports - Cricket
was hard work and inefficient when time was of the essence,” said Ian. “More significantly, it had insufficient safety guards.” There was work to do, but Ian, as a ‘get it
Sky Sports commentator Ian Botham on board a Super Blotter at a wet Edgbaston Ashes Test - and enjoying clearing the ropes again!
“
I believe in old fashioned
engineering. If you make it big and strong enough, it ain’t going to bust. Don’t make something cheaper for the sake of it
was soon under way. Wyke Green Golf Club was Ian’s first client, then Lord’s, Twickenham, Stamford Bridge and other big name venues soon followed. One day at Lord’s working on Mick's kit, the then ECB pitch inspector, the late, great Harry Brind, came up to Ian and asked if he would be interested in looking after their Super Soppers, or Whales as they were better known, and taking them around the country to Test and county grounds. These were then the answer to mopping up areas of excess rainwater and, like all things doing well in cricket at the time, came from Australia. Ian, of course, said yes. “It was a great piece of design by Gorden Withall from Australia. He was a very clever man,” said Ian
The engineer inside him took over. The Super Sopper was 1970s design work and it had plenty of what he saw as ‘shortcomings’. “You had to wind the wheels up, which
100 percent right’ mechanic, knew improvements could be made. In his words, he wanted to do to the Whale what the Japanese motorbike industry had done to the UK industry decades earlier - whip their butts and get things to be much more reliable! Ian set about redesigning the whole machine, with hydraulics introduced to make it more efficient and user-friendly. He saw a benefit to the groundsman in making it out of stronger material too. An abundance of safety guards were also added, winning further favourable attention from groundsmen. “I did loads and loads of doodles and
sketches to get a better Whale. I suppose I was re-inventing it, helping it evolve,” said Ian.
“Hydraulic enhancement meant you no longer had turn a handle, you just push or pull a lever. That had to be an obvious improvement for groundsmen.” Hydraulics has always been Ian’s speciality and there was a Eureka moment when he knew he’d got it right. The new embryo machine was very much his brainchild but, like all babies, it needed a name. He tells me that he and Richard Taylor of nearby RT Machinery, hit upon Blotter over a bottle of whisky one evening in his workshop. It was the simple idea of a blotter’s capacity to soak up. “Obvious link when you think about it, but it took a glass or two to get there,” said Ian with a smile. That was fifteen years ago. He’s since had a bit of a battle getting commentators to refer to it as the Blotter rather than the Whale or Super Sopper. He once went as far as emailing Aggers (BBC cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew) telling him it was the Blotter soaking up the water, and it was British. It provoked a bit of Test Match Special on air discussion, Ian recalls. On television screens it’s unmistakable
because the name is ‘writ’ large on the machine. Sky Sports has, now and again, joked about Blotter being emblazoned on screen, requiring stickers to be placed over the name to dampen what they see as free six figure advertising behind the bowlers arm or batsman’s guard. “There were very few early teething
troubles. I’m glad to say I pretty much got the design right first go,” said Ian. “I believe in old fashioned engineering. If
you make it big and strong enough, it ain’t going to bust. Don’t make something cheaper for the sake of it, and never skimp on materials.” This must strike a chord with the pitchcare business where equipment reliability is everything. The ECB was instrumental in introducing
A Mini Blotter taking an overnight breather at Lord’s during this summer’s Sri Lanka Test
64 I PC AUGUST/SEPTEMBER 2016
water removal equipment to cricket here by providing the earlier Australian machines to grounds. Ian’s involvement has made sure the game here has home produced - and better - kit for the job. All the test and county grounds up and down the country have at least one Blotter
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