Club Cricket

• Speed Barriers
  Crispin Andrews explains the ECB's new fast bowling directives

– Tools of the trade

– How to prepare a pitch to order and find funding for your club

– Ground equipment directory

The groundsman

When it comes to maintaining a pitch or changing its character, two things are key, says Peter Marron: weather and timing. Marron should know. He is set to leave Old Trafford after 30 years as head groundsman and he knows full well that there is only so much you can do in the face of the appalling weather of the last couple of years. “You’ve got to battle against the elements,” he says.

But if more than three decades as a groundsman have taught him anything Marron has learned that “if the batsmen don’t get runs then they blame the pitch and if the bowlers can’t bowl anyone out they blame the pitch”.

That said, club groundsmen can take measures to change the way their strips play but this is where timing comes in – and it may already be too late. “The month after the season finishes is the month,” Marron says. “If you have any major problems, that’s when you tackle them.” It is essentially a three-stage process. “Complete scarifying, reseeding and top-dressing of both the outfield and the square.”

“You don’t mess about during the winter,” Marron warns. So if groundsmen have not already put in the hard work, clubs might want to think about sending them on one of several courses that the Institute of Groundsmanship offers.

It is well worth paying the outfield some proper attention early in the off-season too. Old Trafford may have just lavished more than £500,000 on a new, fast-draining outfield but by top-dressing playing areas with specialist sandy soil Marron says that clubs can improve their drainage too. Again, though, it has to be done immediately after the end of the season or the ground simply will not recover.

As for rabbit problems, Marron says he can only really suggest guns and foxes. Most other solutions are “old wives’ tales,” he says.

Aside from willing volunteers and clement weather, apparently the best Christmas gift any groundsman could get is a Blec seeder. “It used to take us a day to seed a pitch properly – we can now do it in an hour,” he says. “It’s my favourite bit of kit.”

Along with maintaining their equipment and keeping everything around the ground tidy – something Marron is particularly keen on – groundsmen up and down the country should spend time over the winter chatting with their captains and asking how they want their pitch maintained next season. “The way I look at it you’ve got to give them as much help as you can without going over the mark,” he says.

It should be a two-way process, though, and players could make life easier for their groundsmen by being more communicative themselves or perhaps even agreeing to drive the heavy roller for half an hour once a week during the summer.

Premier league clubs should take particular note. The ECB expects especially high-standard pitches at the top club level. Mercifully – even if it sometimes appears optimistic – the ECB guidelines state that “the pitch should be clearly distinguishable from the remainder of the square” and that “the bounce of the pitch should be true and predictable throughout the match”.

The ECB has also published an excellent 80-page document on all manner of pitch preparation and maintenance including ways to test the bounce of a pitch, maintain emerald outfields and even lay new squares. It is available for download in the ‘facilities and funding’ section of the ECB website at www.ecb.co.uk/development. Brochures are also available on upgrading club pavilions and other facilities.

“Most clubs I’ve been to have been strapped for cash and expertise,” admits Marron, “but what they can do, they do well.”

There can be no absolute hard-and-fast rules about what exactly to do when, says Marron. “I think every groundsman has a gut feeling about his own pitch and what he’s looking at,” he says. “Groundmanship is virtually 90% common sense. You should know when to cut, you should know when to roll. Just use your noggin a bit.”

And of course even if the groundsman gets absolutely everything right Marron laments that he can never really win: “There is always someone in the bar who’s a better groundsman than you.”

The club managers

The best cricket clubs are the ones that do not just operate during the summer – just like any chairman will tell you that the best club members are the ones who do not just contribute on a Saturday. A little and often is the key, suggests Tony Thane, the chairman of grounds and buildings at Walsall CC of Birmingham League fame.

“The clubhouse and bar is run consistently through the year,” says the man nicknamed ‘Lord Thane’ at his club. And thanks to a recruitment drive, this winter Walsall’s bar will be worked entirely by volunteers, thus increasing the amount of money pouring into the club funds. Aside from the cricket, it is the bar that attracts the most attention. “I think we’re the only cricket club in the Good Beer Guide,” says Tony. All year round “people come down to our cricket club because the beer is fantastic”.

It is a similar story at Sarisbury Athletic CC in Hampshire. “We go up to the bar most Saturdays during the winter to watch sport there,” says Bob Joyce, vice-president and groundsman at the club that prides itself on being a “really big family affair”. Sarisbury organise plenty of bigger events to keep members entertained over the winter too – including dinner dances, Christmas get-togethers and a night at the dogs. “That was a good money raiser,” says Bob. “They gave us the tickets for nothing and we sold 50 of them for £4 each.”

A year at Walsall is also punctuated by regular events – comedy nights, celebrity nights (where local personalities come down and speak) and quizzes being the main attractions.

There are also beer festivals and player dinners attended by up to 80 members. However, the highlight for most is the last game of the season. “We just have a monumental binge all done at the club,” says Tony. Have Walsall started thinking about 2009? “We haven’t finished celebrating last season yet,” he admits. And well they might – Walsall won the Birmingham Premier League for the third year in a row in 2008.

Aside from drinking, there is winter work to be done at the club too. “The full-time groundsman, Keith Seward, is currently reseeding the square and looking after the ground, getting it loamed up,” says Thane. His other winter tasks will be to repaint the clubhouse and touch up the other club facilities.

And while the seniors are busy tapping up potential players from around their leagues, winter training is on the cards to keep the juniors interested at both clubs. “We started winter nets at Sarisbury the week after we finished outdoors,” says Bob. “Last week we had about 35 down.” He says that keeping juniors interested is vital, pointing to a league-winning first team made up mainly of ex-colts.

Like most clubs Walsall does have occasional problems with vandalism and break-ins, but little valuable property is left on the premises over the winter and any fences that do get bashed down will be swiftly put back up – either by Keith or by the 30-plus people who start each season by spending a day repairing and preparing club facilities as part of NatWest Cricket Force in early April.

“There are a lot of hard-working guys down at the club who make it successful,” Thane says proudly. But volunteers’ work is certainly made easier by having certain individuals at the club whose roles are clearly defined. The chairman of the bar, Steve Joyce (no relation to Bob) apparently “does a splendid job” and it is not at every club you would find separate positions for a groundsman and a chairman of grounds and buildings.

Both Walsall and Sarisbury are blessed with enthusiastic members but those in charge of the clubs make sure they give their members plenty to be enthusiastic about, both on and off the field and in and out of season.

At Sarisbury it is the excellent website and regular newsletters that keep everyone in touch all year round, Bob Joyce says. And good organisation all year round means confidence is high at Walsall too. “It’s a great club,” boasts Lord Thane, “it really is.”
 

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