The Summer Field

155 Leyland, father of Maurice, worked at Warwickshire until 1939; in 1942 Fred Pope, father of the Derbyshire brothers, took over. As likely, and less flattering to the game, clubs employed professionals who prepared the ground they played on; that way clubs could pay the one pro’ less than they would have given to a separate groundsman and net bowler. Some professionals objected. In November 1920, in his sixth letter in seven weeks of chasing the job of pro’ and coach at Durham City, George Wakerley wrote: ‘I have received an offer, but there is a ground job attached to the post and to be quite candid I am not wanting such heavy work as I feel no cricketer can do justice to either himself or his club when he is tired out all the week by heavy ground work.’ Most of the other pros’ chasing that job had some ground-keeping in their background. Some of it sounded like downright drudgery. In May 1909 Durham City instructed its groundsman to ‘clean out and keep clean the WC’ and ‘to prepare a trench for depositing the grass from the ground’. Lads on the ground staff at Lord’s and other county grounds notoriously had to do whatever they were told: pull the heavy roller, sell score cards, clear litter. In an article in the Somerset yearbook for 1963/4, the former bowler Bill Andrews reminisced how he and fellow pro’ Arthur Wellard painted or distempered a stand or hoardings (‘the extra couple of pounds came in useful’) around the Taunton ground. ‘Nearer the season we rolled the wicket and picked Pitches George Wakerley, Nottingham friend of Will Richards and professional cricketer: portrait photo enclosed in one of his several letters to Durham Cricket Club in autumn 1920.