The Summer Field

153 that all members should assemble on the ground on Thursday night ‘and do what is necessary’, presumably to make the place fit for play on the Saturday. In April 1901 the committee agreed to advertise ‘for the office of groundsman’. The larger the ground, the more the work. At least that offered the prospect of better conditions. When Walsall moved to their new ground on Gorway Road in 1909, the Walsall Observer approved of the 40-yard square pitch, ‘which will obviate the necessity of going back to a wicket before the ground has had a fair chance to recover’. Better conditions drew a better class of player. The Hertfordshire player Tom Austin was captain, then president at Hitchin. Like most clubs it was struggling for money by the 1980s. He had the idea of running benefit matches: first for Geoff Boycott, then David Gower, John Emburey and Graham Barlow, Allan Lamb, Graeme Fowler, ‘and the big one, Richard Hadlee, 1986, who said, would you like me to bring Nottinghamshire or New Zealand. I said, bring New Zealand.’ Later New Zealand played their first match of their 1994 tour at Hitchin. ‘A lot of them realised how good the wicket was so that went down very well.’ Too often players took the pitch for granted. How else to explain the match between Beverley and Brough police divisions at Cottingham outside Hull in July 1940? A ‘yellow alert’ air raid warning held up play, only for the men to resume in ‘fairly heavy rain’. A second ‘yellow alert’ sent them to the pavilion again at 3.55pm. They took tea then to save time. More rain fell, and on the groundsman’s advice they abandoned the match, ‘to prevent further damage to turf’. While you could admire the policemen for snatching pleasure, and defying Hitler, when did that shade into irresponsible ruining of a field for others? * Cricketers avoided ground work because they paid common people to do it. At Hinton St George in Somerset, Joseph Bicknell, one of the village’s seven yeomen according to a county directory of the time, received £4 for rent of a field for the 1830 season from Oliver Stubbs, the secretary of Ham Hill club. By comparison the illiterate labourer John Chick earned two shillings for each day’s work on the field, about once a week from late May, and seven days in August, presumably when the club played most. He must have cut the grass before a game, as he was also paid twopence for grinding a scythe, besides one and a half pence for ‘repairing of bat’. In fairness the club did spend large sums on the ground, besides themselves. While a day’s cricket in 1831 typically cost £6 5s, including dining, ‘grog for Mr Bicknell’, and a hired tent, 16 shillings went on rolling of the ground, and in the winter of 1832-3 Chick was paid £20, a year’s wages, ‘for levelling the ground in cricket field as per agreement with the committee’. As a meeting to set up Addington Park club in Kent in 1859 (‘in no way to the detriment of the existing Malling club’) made plain, a groundsman had to be a dogsbody. The meeting resolved ‘that someone be obtained as the established servant of the club whose business it shall be to keep Pitches