Cricket Witness No 5 - Whites on Green

45 Swansea becomes a county ground “In my schoolboy days, every boy had a feeling of awe when he passed the old Swansea cricket pavilion. It was one of the most historic institutions in the town. How we used to dodge Old Man Tucker, the groundsman, but reflecting I now suspect that he very often conveniently had a job out of sight when the boys climbed the low white-washed walls of St. Helen’s on big match occasions.” 4 As the evocative mastheads on the county’s scorecards illustrate, the single-storey structure was still in use in 1921 as Glamorgan entered the first-class world, with Glamorgan playing host to Warwick Armstrong and the Australian tourists. It was all change by the time the Australians played in Swansea in 1930, as the previous winter had seen the creation of a more spacious building plus tiered seating and the legendary seventy- odd step-walk back up from the playing area and into the dressing rooms. The new building, designed for use by the rugby players and cricketers had seen the creation of two changing rooms plus an umpires room on the ground floor, with separate entrances for the amateurs and professionals, whilst the upper floor contained a colonnade and veranda. The front cover of a Glamorgan CCC scorecard in 1926.