Ground Improvements

As you may know, since the redevelopment of the sporting facilities, the cricket section has had to suffer a great many unforeseen ground problems. Such as the newly laid  3rd XI wicket sinking (causing the 3rd XI to play away all last season), due to poor workmanship, the artificial wicket being a complete disaster and the outfield in front of the pavilion being in quite a shocking state, which was due to a combination of the dry weather and poor groundwork by the gardening firm who 'landscaped' the cricketing facilities.

Well good news, Jonny Froment, who as most of you know is the Sports Club Chairman and Tennis Captain, but also dashing strokemaker of the 3rd XI, has tirelessly championed our cause. First of all he won compensation from Fairviews for the debacle of the bottom square and artificial wicket created by Fairview's sub-contractors Bernards - also thanks to Fairviews for recognising this - then a masterstroke by Jonny, he employed Active Ground Maintenance to carry out major groundwork outside the remit of the groundsman. 'AGM' are instrumental in the carrying out the good work that I'm about to inform you of and from what I am told and can see, they are an extremely professional outfit.

AGM re-laid the bottom square last year, which has bedded in very well and is ready to play on this coming season. It is in all probability going to be better than the first team wicket! Also they will be replacing the artificial wicket around Easter time - this wicket won't be just a slab of concrete (with the shuttering still in place!) with a green mat on top, it will have shock pads and the best artificial grass surface available. In addition AGM also carry out the regular Verti Draining of the football pitch and the bowls Green, and maintain the groundsman equipment.

And finally AGM carried out what I consider a vital piece of work, next in importance to the re-laying of the 3rd team wicket. As I mentioned before the outfield in front of the pavilion was in a shocking state, we had undulations on this piece of land which made it quite dangerous for fielding and near impossible to cut the grass properly with the gang mower, ie the mower scalped the peaks and missed the troughs, also we had bricks and rocks appearing through the surface and not to mention the 'San Holtibus' fault line! Whilst it was prohibitively expensive for us to dig up the ground and re-lay the outfield, Jonny Froment instructed AGM to do the next best thing in my opinion, which was to add 100 tons of topsoil to an area 108m by 20m from the top car park down to the scorebox and then seed the area.

Have a look at the picture below and you can see how good the grass looks on the newly repaired Ground in front of pavilion.

We have many things to thank Johnny Froment and the support of the Club Management Committee for and I hope that this year we will see the fruits of their labour.

Paul Hewitt