Summer Sports - Cricket
“ “ 64 I PC JUNE/JULY 2017
Only a few months earlier I had been welding and erecting steel structures and now I was helping out at one of Colchester’s major sporting events
The picturesque river Colne was responsible for some serious flooding; in 1958, deckchairs floated across the outfield
floated across the outfield. They remained at the Garrison until 1975 when the drainage system at Castle Park was extensively upgraded and have continued to play matches there since. However, the return did not go without its problems; a match against Kent in early June 1975 was disrupted by snow!
As head groundsman, Jez is responsible for Colchester Castle’s moat
the two squares and outfield and is one happy man; content in what he considers a great job and doing it well, he sleeps easy at night. That’s not always been the case, as he was somewhat thrown in at the deep end when he was appointed, mid-season, in 2012. However, let’s turn the clock back to 2007, when he joined the Colchester Borough Council staff as groundsman at the Old Heath Recreation Ground, responsible for maintaining bowling greens in the south of Colchester. A local lad, born and bred in England’s oldest recorded town, he was educated at St Helena School, before joining the family engineering business, where he became a qualified welder and steel erector. This took him around the UK, travelling
I look after the two squares, the
outfields and I'm also responsible for the maintenance of the covers. Pitch choice, who plays where and when, is also down to me
extensively and away from his young and growing family. He wasn’t enjoying the lifestyle; he missed his family and had a hankering for an outdoor job. So, in 2007, he applied for the position with the local council and was successful. Most of his training was ‘on the job’ and he found he had a real aptitude for groundsmanship. That same year he was asked, and
accepted the offer, to join the support staff at the Colchester Cricket Festival. “I thoroughly enjoyed it,” he said. “That
first year everything was new to me and I was taking in as much information as I could. It was a great experience; only a few months earlier I had been welding and erecting steel structures and now I was helping out at one of Colchester’s major sporting events.” In 2009, Jez was promoted and went to manage the sports facilities at the Mile End Recreation Ground in the north of the borough. The 9.6 hectare site includes six full
size football pitches and a cricket pitch, the home of Great Horkesley and Lexden Cricket Club. The same year he was invited by Essex County Cricket Club head groundsman, Stuart Kerrison, to help out at a T20 game at the Chelmsford county ground and continued on the support team at successive Colchester Cricket Festivals. Then came the career-changing opportunity when, in the middle of the 2012 cricket season, the head groundsman at Colchester and East Essex resigned. Jez accepted the offer to take over and, although hectic, he got through the season without too much fuss. His first full year in 2013 he describes as
‘difficult’ as he got to grips with the job, although he did win the North Essex Cricket League’s Groundsman of the Year award. From thereon in, he has been revelling in the job. You only need to look on the clubhouse wall at the awards he has won to appreciate he’s now extremely competent in his role.
• 2013 Groundsman of the Year, North Essex Cricket League
• 2014 Groundsman of the Year, Shepherd Neame Essex League
• 2015 Commendation Outgrounds, England & Wales Cricket Board
• 2015 Groundsman of the Year, Shepherd Neame Essex League
Jez is employed by idverde UK, a grounds maintenance company in the UK, formed by the merger of The Landscape Group and Quadron Services Ltd in February 2016. Sitting on the clubhouse veranda on a lovely spring morning in early April, I asked Jez to outline his responsibilities at the ground. “My responsibilities are very easy to
describe; it’s everything inside the boundary ropes. All of the grass and green space outside the rope is maintained by my colleagues at idverde under our seven-year contract with Colchester Borough Council, which began last year. So I look after the two squares, the outfields and I’m also responsible for the maintenance of the
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