C Ellis: England Cricket Diary (25 Jul 1998)

THE England and Wales Cricket Board have scored another unwitting own goal by going outside the ranks of county groundsmen to appoint a successor to Harry Brind as pitches consultant

25-Jul-1998

25 July 1998

England Cricket Diary

By Clive Ellis

Grounds for being a little aggrieved

THE England and Wales Cricket Board have scored another unwitting own goal by going outside the ranks of county groundsmen to appoint a successor to Harry Brind as pitches consultant.

The choice of one 'outsider', Malcolm Ashton, as England scorer for recent winter tours, ruffled the feathers of the county operators. Now Chris Wood's selection has infuriated groundsmen. No sooner had the appointment been confirmed on Wednesday than a straw poll was conducted, confirming that 16 of the 18 headquarters groundsmen were outraged by the choice of the 47-year-old Wood.

Certainly his credentials are low key: he was schooled under Brind at the Oval and is now groundsman at Shenley Park in Hertfordshire.

Alan Fordham, the ECB's cricket operations manager, said simply: "We employed the man who we thought was best for the job."

The role is being expanded to encompass recreational cricket and lecturing, but the county groundsmen, five of whom applied for the job, will not be easily appeased. One said: "It stinks. What they're saying is there's not one first-class groundsman in the country good enough to do the job."

SUSSEX are holding their own inquiry into the Duckworth-Lewis mess-up at their rain-interrupted floodlit AXA League game against Middlesex at Hove last Monday, which, in the words of Dave Gilbert, was "potentially quite a disaster".

Gilbert, deputy chief executive, disclosed that Chris Adams, Sussex's captain, had not been aware of the correct target while at the crease until his team were a dozen runs from Middlesex's total of 125. Fortunately, Adams's fifty had made the result a foregone conclusion, even with the 35-over target raised without warning by eight runs.

Gilbert believed that the fact that Middlesex had been bowled out before their 35 overs had led to the assumption that the Duckworth-Lewis method did not apply. He said: "There was a major misunderstanding and we've got to make sure it doesn't happen again."

While the Sussex innings ran towards its close, the two captains, umpires Graham Burgess and John Steele, the scorers, Sussex's match manager, Sky Television and the 4,000-plus crowd remained in blissful ignorance. An exception was Peter Byrne, the press box scorer. One small voice ...

MUCH has been written about the Trent Bridge Test between England and South Africa in 1965 - the "Pollock Test" - in which Graeme scored 125 and Peter took ten for 87 as South Africa won by 94 runs.

Peter is here again as father of Shaun and convenor of the selectors. What does he remember of his brother's great innings? "Well, we were 43 for four at one point. That's about it ... in those days I was superstitious about watching Graeme so I sat in the dressing-room while the team took turns to play cards with me.

"Then, after he got his century, I finally allowed myself on to the balcony and he was immediately out."

ANDY CADDICK chose an interview in an AXA League programme to outline his starkly competitive philosophy: "I'm all for sledging. It's part of the game and I do it myself." The Somerset bowler also responded bluntly when asked who he had been most pleased to meet in the game? Answer: "Nobody in particular."

Source :: Electronic Telegraph (https://www.telegraph.co.uk)