SUMMER SPORTS


Lytham Cricket and Sports Club


Where there’s a Wells, there’s a way


Lytham Cricket and Sports Club is situated a stone’s throw away from the Fylde coastline and is primarily the home of Lytham Cricket Club. Over the years, many other sports have come to call this ground home and, the club’s twenty-fi ve-year-old full-time Head Groundsman, Thomas Wells took some time out of his busy schedule to speak to Lee Williams


60 PC April/May 2021 T


homas’ heavy workload is such that he manages the facilities at both Lytham Sports Club along with his part-time role at Garstang Cricket Club, and he is responsible for the budgets at both grounds. “It’s been a big step up since being at Lytham. At Garstang it’s just one playing surface, whereas at Lytham there are four diff erent surfaces in one, which means that I have to create and plan the budget according to what I deem essential.” The Lytham site consists of one senior football pitch, a cricket square with twenty- four wickets, six grass tennis courts and seven artifi cial surfaces.


Situated one hundred metres from the sea, Thomas describes the majority of the site as a heavy sand-based soil. Both the grass tennis courts and the cricket square


are on Kettering loam. “This does mean that the site drains well and, generally, the only time we have a problem is during winter when the water table is so high that we get standing water, but after one or two dry days, the water soon goes and you can get back on with things.”


“We do have an old clay land-based drainage system which, as far as I’m aware, is over seventy years old, but it does still pull - that is until it is made redundant, once the water table hits a certain level. After confi rmation from the previous groundsman, we have only had one game called off due to rain in the last seven years.” The club has six roll-on covers that allow Thomas to produce (then cover-up) two fresh wickets for every Saturday and Sunday.


He talks me through the maintenance of


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