Summer Sports - Cricket


You have an opportunity to learn what I know, but if something comes along for you, take it. I don't want you sitting in my pockets year after year


New Rover’s pavilion was partly funded by Sport England’s National Lottery Fund and was built in 1998


hours, he was so nice, until you had no secrets left. Ray [Illingworth] and Graham [Gooch] really understood pitches. Imran Khan would talk you me for quite a time too, while Viv Richards wouldn’t be bothered. ‘We won’t complain about the pitch, but don’t you complain when you come to the West Indies’, he’d say.” It was in spring 1995 that Margaret was diagnosed with cancer. “We had bought a house outside the ground, but this put everything on hold. Ian [Barber] was my assistant and he did most of the manual work on the square which, in my view, reached the highest mark in quality and pace for any pitches at Headingley.” “I was sick that Margaret didn’t see what


we’d both worked so hard to achieve. That was it for me, I couldn’t handle cricket there anymore.” In the early 1990s, Keith had given New


Rover Cricket Club a programme of work to follow. Now was the time to make a move there. Under his watch, Yorkshire brought its Academy to the ground, beseeching Keith to go back on its books, but he preferred a voluntary role. Standards never wavered and New Rover’s


ground was rated highly enough for the England Test squad to practise there under Michael Vaughan’s captaincy. Now, newly appointed England captain Joe Root and


team mate Jonny Bairstow loved to play there, he remembers. Perhaps sounding startling to some, Keith’s


sentiments over pitches reveal the complexity of the task in hand and his mastery of it. “To my mind, they are basic - simple things, as long as you are clear what you are trying to produce.” He switches back to discussing management style. “I had a philosophy with the lads and told them: ‘I don't want you to stay here. You have an opportunity to learn what I know, but if something comes along for you, take it. I don’t want you sitting in my pockets year after year’.” Keith has a special fondness for Sheldon


Bonner, who ended us as deputy head groundsman. “He came to Headingley in 1980 under a council scheme to place lads in work. I knew when I first met Sheldon that he had potential.” Following the era of Sheldon, Ian Barber and Jonathan Smith, came that of Jason Booth. “A good cricketer in Yorkshire’s Academy, he arrived in the early 1990s and used to cut the outfield at first. I offered him the Leeds Rugby League pitch and, as soon as he started, it was clear that he was special.” Margaret may have been ‘mother’ to the


Headingley grounds team, on hand early morning with ‘sarnies and tea’, but Keith was


”


Above: Stay trim and fit with the Keith Boyce fitness programme. Keith strides out on to the Richmond Oval with the brio of a man half his age. What’s his secret? “I take care of my diet, exercise three or four days a week - stretching mainly to stay mobile - and play a round of golf locally. I don't smoke and enjoy a glass of wine occasionally.”


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