Reflection…..

Its time for reflection now that we are in the winter. The last signs of flood damage are gone and the place is nearly back to normal. It’s a quiet time now. This is when the majority of staff takes their holidays and the summer staff have finished so there are not as many people around. Now I can sit back and take stock of the season gone. So what’s different? Everything is different but very similar, if that makes sense!!! My first big change was not working alone. Going from being on your own and doing everything yourself to working in a groundstaff of 5 was a big change. I always liked working alone; I loved the responsibility of not relying on someone else to do something. I was always proud of looking out and knowing that what was in front of me was as a result of my work. Obviously when I first arrived it was an immediate change. It took me a while to find my feet and adapt to the way things are done over here. Everything has a place in our shed. It’s quite clean, neat and tidy. The machinery is cleaned after every use, which is easier to do when you have the staff numbers available. There’s no shoving the mower in the shed and then worry about it tomorrow! Everything goes back where it belongs, which is a great help when you are looking for them the next time! And they love their tea breaks! Once 10am comes around it’s off to the mess-room for tea. I was never one for tea breaks! Most jobs are shared evenly.  Nobody is asked to do something that they wouldn’t do themselves. Jobs tend to be rotated, which is a good idea as you don’t get bored doing the same thing week in week out. I found that especially useful as it gave me a taste of the way things are done. Obviously there are high standards in the finish we leave on the ground. Every effort is made to make sure not a blade of grass is out of place and that there is a good, clean look to the ground. Everybody talks about the beauty of the ground with the trees lining the perimeter and the great view of the cathedral but if the ground looked tatty it would take away from it all. After all first impressions last!! Pitch preparation is slightly different. Because of the number of fixtures we had this season there was a huge demand and strain on the square. Whereas most of the other counties take some fixtures away to ‘outgrounds’, we had all our games fixed to play at New Road. Put in a 3 day game of South Africa playing Bangladesh, a one day game against New Zealand, a 4 day under 19 Test match and  a Deaf ‘Ashes’ match against Australia, it meant there were too many matches for the number of pitches!! It’s a lot of cricket!! We count cricket by days over here, not matches. During the season there were 63 of day’s cricket fixed on the ground. That meant the covers being on the whole square nearly every night. We have 15 First Class pitches. Every 4 day game is played on a new pitch. Also 4 of our pitches are wired for TV games so you have to save them for your TV games. You know most of them before the season starts but there are times when you may or may not be on TV, depending on the importance of the match. It could be a quarter/semi final, or a play-off game. That creates problems when it comes to pitch preparation. Because we have no permanent TV gantrys they are built in the stands before the game. Once they go up, they stay up! Generally the gantry is built wide enough to cover two pitches. The Club don’t want a massive gantry up as it takes up valuable seat space. Bums on seats mean revenue so we don’t want every seat covered.  One problem you have then is you are restricted to what pitches you can use, which results in ‘used’ pitches being played on. This is why you generally see ‘used’ pitches that are dusty and spin towards the end on the Twenty20 competition. There are 5 home games normally played on 2 pitches, then you may get through to the knockout stage and you have to use the same pitch. Counties can’t move pitches as they are committed to TV. This is when we get the glue out! With there being so many days cricket the covers are always on. As I mentioned before the covers had been on for the majority of the summer. There was only a one week long break when there was no cricket on and we could get to work on the square and leave it open to the elements. We reseeded old wickets during that time but the next week the covers were back on. An impossible situation to grow grass on. Towards the end of the season the square looked quite tired. It was badly in need of some water and light. Obviously not the flood that we got! All in all I must say that I loved it!! The buzz around County Cricket is one of the reasons I came hear. Couple that with the intensity of so many days cricket meant that I was always active and working towards the next game. It’s a great relief to me that I have no regrets about my move!