Summer Sports - Cricket


gathered over the years. “The club has been magnificent,” Keith


“


declares. “They know this is my life and that I love what I do. It’s all voluntary, of course. I wouldn’t enjoy the work if it was salaried. I go at my own pace and do my own thing and I plan to stay here until the good Lord takes me.”


The club know this is my life and that I love what I do. It’s all voluntary, of course. I wouldn’t enjoy the work if it was salaried


Keith Boyce - eighty years young and still enjoying being a cricket groundsman


This joyous setting is tinged with sadness though. On the wall by his armchair hangs a portrait of Bracken, his beloved Springer Spaniel, who died almost two years ago. “He was as daft as a brush,” Keith reminisces, “a legend around the club and truly special.” Someone so passionate about his craft, as Keith, would have to suffer a body blow to match one of those infamous Bodyline deliveries, unleashed by England in the 1932- 33 Ashes series, to be forced to desert the hallowed turf. The death of Margaret, his inspiration, friend and lifelong partner, nearly twenty years ago was that body blow. ‘Mother’ to many of Keith’s budding groundsmen, she was a great steadying influence to his protégés.


In memory of her, he planted a lime tree at the cricket ground when he moved here. “The leaves are heart-shaped, which I think is appropriate,” he says. “I would like my ashes buried under it where I can see the square.” We raid the memory banks again. “I


started at Headingley in 1978, just me and an assistant then. I’d had no grooming - I’m a ‘do on my own’ type of guy, a simple village green lad born in a hamlet. I thought I’d been given a knighthood when I landed there.” That hamlet was Kildale near Whitby - and


a stone’s throw from Castleton, Margaret’s birthplace. Keith had started out working on the Guisborough Cricket Club ground for two years. “It was a right sight. The outfield grass was blowing in the wind. I said to them: ‘If someone can tackle that, I’ll handle the square’.”


Keith lives in a bungalow built specially for him at New Rover CC’s Adel ground


Then, in the early 1970s, fate intervened.


Middlesbrough, one of Yorkshire’s outgrounds, had a problem. “They might have lost county cricket. They had heard about me and wanted me to become full- time groundsman there,” Keith relates. “My day job was working at ICI Wilton. I


had my own house and family. If I moved, it would mean a big cut in money, but Margaret said to me: ‘I know your love is cricket’, so off we went.” It was in 1977, his second season there,


that he won a national award from Lord’s. “It was the first time a groundsman working in Yorkshire had won.” Two years later, Keith triumphed again. “I couldn't see what all the fuss was about,” he states diffidently. His career took another twist soon


afterwards. “One of the Yorkshire committee asked me if I fancied coming to Headingley. I had no groundsmanship certificates, that sort of thing, and am very much a practical guy. I thought Headingley was too big for me and that it needed someone special to manage the ground.” But he mulled over the offer and Yorkshire


Keith on the outfield at New Rover CC 48 I PC APRIL/MAY 2017


courted him again, promising that the retiring head groundsman, George Cawthray, a


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