GROUNDSMANSHIP - PART ONE

By Jon Taylor, Hibaldstow CC, Lincs groundsman of the year

For most cricket club members September brings an end to the season and their kit bags head up into the loft for another winter. In times gone by it often also brought a welcome rest for the groundsman as the square was “put to bed for winter”. A few quick repairs were made to footholes and then the ground might be hardly visited until the next April. Not any more. Today’s groundsman knows that the end of one playing season is the start of the next. Over the coming months I plan to send in a series of pieces reporting the work that I do to prepare the square for the following summer. These are my methods and are to be presented to promote thought and discussion on this blog site through the winter months. Others will use different techniques. Any club seeking expert formal advice should contact Martin Deans – our County Pitch Advisor and Holton-le-Clay’s groundsman.

This first piece will look at scarifying, but before that, a little theory to explain why all the work is done.

All summer we’ve been stressing the cricket square. Rolling compresses the soil, closing all of the pores that help water and air reach the roots. Cutting the grass down to 3mm or less weakens the grass, killing probably more than half of the plants. Wicket ends get heavy wear – digging holes and killing 100% of the grass over a pretty wide area. On top of that grass leaf litter can build up through the summer and older grass plants develop tough straw-like stems and coarse fibrous root systems which eventually develop into “thatch”. Excess organic matter in cricket soils is one of the groundsman’s worst enemies. No single maintenance technique can tackle all of these problems. The priority for the groundsman is to clean out all unwanted plant debris, level the surface and get the next generation of grass plants growing strongly before winter sets in. Once the grass cover is back good and strong the focus can be turned to decompressing the square.

Scarifying is the first part of the process. When I started in the cricket groundsman game the state of the art scarifiers available to all but the largest clubs were lightweight machines capable of doing a respectable job on a back lawn, but incapable of scratching the surface of a hard cricket square. They were fine for clearing out surface debris but did nothing to sub-surface thatch build-up unless the ground was really soft. Today we are lucky to have access to much beefier machines – through purchase, hiring or membership of the County Groundsmens’ Association. At Hibaldstow we use the latter option.

The key aims of scarification are to clear the surface of all but healthy grass and to create the best conditions for the new seed to grow. Today’s big scarifiers are easily capable of cutting several mm into a dry cricket square, ripping out thatch, unhealthy and dead grass whilst at the same time creating slots for seed to fall into and then germinate. The way these scarifiers are built they also help to level the surface – cutting deeper where the ground is high. As the pictures show, using one of these machines when the ground is dry is a dirty dusty process!


The process of scarifying has three key steps;

· Cut the whole square down to about 5mm

· Scarify

· Collect arisings

The second and third steps are repeated in different directions until the job is judged sufficiently done.

In the pictures I can be seen with the Lincolnshire Groundsmen’s Assocaition DJ scarifier and Tom is clearing up with our Protea groomer – which acts a lot like a power-rake.

How much, and how deep to scarify is a matter of skill and judgement. The groundsman must know what is below the surface before knowing how deep to go – but the rule of thumb that I use is that when the arisings start to contain more weight of soil than plant, enough’s been done. Experience tells me that it usually takes four repetitions of the scarify:collect cycle on our square. I usually work side to side, then on the two diagonals and then finish in line with the direction of play.

Clearing up after the final pass is critical to the quality of the overall job. Two days after we completed the scarifying I returned for a second dose of clearing. Using the groomer, set to just kiss the surface, I collected a further six barrow loads of trash. Burying this under the new seed and loam would greatly reduce the benefit of doing the work.

Due to work commitments I won’t get seed and top dressing down until the next few days. That job is to be the focus of the next posting.

NF adds: Sincere thanks to Jon (pictured) for penning that piece which will be of interest not only to the general readers of Lincs Cricket Latest but also those involved in keeping club squares in good repair and order.