CRICKET
Bath Cricket Club
A green oasis in the city centre Bath Cricket Club’s ground sits in the heart of the historic city, just a short walk from its centre. In this article, Gordon Gill, the club’s Head Groundsman for close on twenty years, charts his career to date and talks about practices that will be familiar to many cricket groundsmen the length and breadth of the UK
W
hat a last couple of years, never known anything quite like it, but that’s in the past now, we hope. Onwards and upwards. I started as a part time volunteer at my local recreational cricket club in the autumn of 1980. Old boy groundsman finished after many years leaving no one to do the job. Someone had to do it, so I had a go. End of season renovations were almost unheard of at my club in those days, so I had a look around, threw a little seed and some soil I found hanging around into the ends, found a bag of what I thought was selective weedkiller, threw that around where the weeds were and went home. A few days later, I had another look and some of the grass was yellowing; strange I thought. A week later and lots of the grass was obviously dying, leaving straggly ribbons of green grass all across the square. I had applied a total weedkiller! So my introduction into turf care was rather a disappointing one for both me and the club. I think we played the whole of the next season on about five pitches before there was an attempt made in the following autumn to correct things. About three years later, the council actually bought the ground from the MOD and great plans were put into place to totally redevelop the ground and build a new sports hall to include changing rooms for outdoor sports and a bar area, great. The downside was that the council took
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over the maintenance of the ground, including the newly laid and repositioned cricket square. This was when my hunger to learn more drove me on. I attended whatever IOG courses I could, all funded by myself, learnt what I could off the council boys and offered to help them. Within a couple of years, I was managing the show and the council would introduce new workers to me. It actually worked out well for many years. During this time, I was employed as a class one lorry driver with Tesco; best job I ever had, that was until February 1999 when the depot closed and I was made redundant. In 1998, with redundancy in mind, I attended day release and completed my NVQ2 at Hartpury College, much to the surprise of the young boys. It was at this time that I first met the now legendary Matt Gresty of Limagrain. This time also coincided with the council putting many services out to tender. As I was intending to set myself up as a sports ground contractor, I applied to tender to manage my own sportsfield and got the job. One or two other clubs had heard what I was about and another couple of jobs came along and I was up and running. It was during the late summer of 2002 that I was made aware of a vacancy for a full-time groundsman at Bath Cricket Club. I got the job, at the third time of trying mind. I first applied in 1994 when redundancy was first mooted; I was unsuccessful. The second time was in 2001, and I never even got an interview, so I was a little surprised that I was
successful in 2002. I did learn later that Phil Frost (former Head Groundsman at the County Ground, Taunton) had been offered the post before me but that he eventually turned it down. Going back to the year 2000, I was offered the opportunity to become a pitch advisor for the Wiltshire Cricket Board. The week-long course was to be held in Kent during October 2000. I couldn’t get there fast enough. My cricket experience took off. I met many very influential first-class groundsmen and turf professionals on that course and many are still friends and associates today. People like the ECB’s Chris Wood, Len Smith at Glamorgan, Roy McLaren from Worcester, Durham’s Tom Flintoft, now sadly deceased, Simon Tremlin at Wormsley, Jonathan Smith at JMS, David Bates from total play, Alan Lewis (top man), Peter Drury, now deceased, and Professor Bill Adams. Apologies to those I have missed out/forgotten, but it was one of the most informative weeks of my life. Enough of the name dropping, apart from one man, Martin Townsend. I was first introduced to Martin in the early 90s. At this time, he was a sales rep for Avoncrop Amenity and he alone gave me the confidence to get on with it and do my thing. I could ring him whenever I liked and he was always there to support me with advice, which was invaluable, priceless. Thank you Martin. So, back to 2002, and I was in a full-time job looking after a top recreational cricket
