The Summer Field

156 up the sheep’s droppings from the outfield.’ Andrews once arrived for work five minutes late to find Wellard, the head groundsman Harry Fernie, and Cecil Buttle in the shafts of the heavy roller, going up and down the first wicket of the season: I could see by Mr Fernie’s face that trouble was brewing and four was the minimum number really for the roller. Walking up to Harry I said, sorry I am a bit late, Mr Fernie, and stuttered, but I have no excuse. Back came Harry’s prompt reply, if you had brought out an excuse, you b-, I would have sacked you. They were happy times nonetheless and it was all well worth it to play for Somerset. The work was endless and laborious and, as Andrews hinted, a means to an end. If ground-keeping suited you, and you persevered and learned the trade, you could find yourself in demand in a market beyond cricket, at tennis and bowls clubs, often linked. In May 1940 Arthur Ransome, the secretary of Welton Club near Hull, agreed that Brough police division could play there, and use the pavilion and kitchen for teas, and Welton would roll and mark the wicket; for a charge of £1 per match. The police could not afford it and went elsewhere. If you paid into the club, you could call the tune, as Sir Julien Cahn did at Leicestershire in the 1930s. He first cropped up in the county’s finance committee minutes in August 1933 when his £500 gift went straight towards reducing the club’s bank overdraft. On Saturday, September 21, 1935, county captain Charles Dempster visited Cahn’s home and told Cahn the Leicester ground was ‘in a very bad state’ – which suggested that Cahn never saw the club he donated to. According to Cahn’s letter to the club later that day, Dempster: asks me to let my groundsman go over and inspect it. I understand that certain work is necessary upon the ground immediately: I was also surprised to learn that there is no proper groundsman in charge. I was prepared with Mr Dempster to inaugurate a scheme at my expense for the acquisition of new members: it seems to me useless however to do anything of this nature when the home ground is in such an unsatisfactory condition. Surely the first essential of a county cricket club is to have a proper ground with its own wickets and outfield … Cahn came to the point; Leicestershire ought to have a ‘proper and experienced groundsman’, ‘at a salary of not less than £250 a year. Cheap labour is obviously never any good and is actually merely waste.’ The club twisted Cahn’s conditions by agreeing to employ a head groundsman, ‘at not more than £5 a week’, in other words making a maximum of Cahn’s minimum. Like all businesses when seeking to economise, Leicestershire found it hard to make cuts, as almost all it spent was for a reason. Wherever it could skimp, it did, by letting the ground and buildings run down, regardless of what the ground committee admitted in October 1935 were ‘many disparaging remarks from members and visiting teams’. You could not skimp on pitches – for play or practice - without the club suffering overall. At its annual meeting in 1909, Durham City admitted it did not have a decent practice wicket and few good match wickets, and as a result ‘members became slack in practice’, the Durham Advertiser Pitches