Confessions of a cricket groundsman: The secrets of the sport’s most thankless task

The chances are you have never heard of Gary Barwell or Karl McDermott — but they fulfil vital roles in cricket. Barwell is the groundsman at Edgbaston, Birmingham, and McDermott at Lord’s, the so-called Home of Cricket, London.

Barwell must be wondering if his hard work was worth it, during a period of particularly dry weather in the United Kingdom, after England’s 336-run second-Test hammering by India. England captain Ben Stokes told the BBC’s Test Match Special, “it probably ended up being more of a sub-continent pitch as it got deeper and deeper into the game.

“Then just as it sort of got deeper and deeper, it just became a real tough slog for us and obviously with the Indian attack and the conditions that they’re used to and (they) knew how to expose those conditions a little bit better than us.”

Stokes’ bowling attack looked gun-shy in comparison to Akash Deep and Mohammed Siraj, who took 17 wickets between them. It may have helped England to bat first after winning the toss and coach Brendon McCullum suggested it was a decision they had got wrong.

All eyes will now be on what McDermott produces at Lord’s for the third Test. So how difficult is it to produce a cricket wicket? The Athletic went to find out.

Jason Gillespie, one half of a devastating opening bowling partnership for Australia alongside Glenn McGrath, knows a thing or two about cricket pitches.

So when the former fast bowler, in his then new role as Yorkshire first-team coach, pulled aside Scarborough head groundsman John Dodds for a chat before a County Championship game at the seaside resort, the Englishman was all ears.

“I hear you prepare a pitch with decent bounce,” said Gillespie. “All the lads love playing on it so please carry on doing that. I’ll never say anything to you about pitches unless the nicks aren’t carrying to slip. Only then will I have a word.”

Gillespie went on to lead Yorkshire to promotion, two County Championship titles and a runners-up spot during five years at the helm. He never had anything but praise for Scarborough, even comparing it to a track back home famous for its steepling bounce and soaring carry.

“A few have said over the years we’re the closest in this country to the WACA,” says Dodds, referring to the Western Australia Cricket Association ground, a former Test venue, in Perth. “Gordon Hollins (former managing director for county cricket for the English Cricket Board) was the most recent, earlier this year.”

Scarborough has, indeed, developed a fine reputation under Dodds’ care. In eight of the past dozen years, he has picked up the outground pitches trophy at the ECB Grounds Manager of the Year awards.

Considering the sizeable number and quality of outgrounds where cricket can be watched each summer away from the 18 counties’ main headquarters — an afternoon at Arundel can be a joy, likewise Cheltenham College, Sedbergh or Chesterfield’s Queen’s Park — such dominance is no mean feat.

His most recent prize came in 2023. Worthy recognition of the dedication, sacrifice and no little skill that goes into serving not only Yorkshire’s needs when playing 10 days of first-class cricket per year at a venue where the Scarborough Cricket Festival has been staged since 1876, but also the host club’s assortment of senior and junior teams.

Dodds estimates 120 days of cricket were played on the North Marine Road ground last year. Some of these involved a couple of games on the same day, as everything from Northern Diamonds fixtures in the women’s Rachael Heyhoe Flint Trophy to Yorkshire men’s second-team matches vied for a prized spot in the calendar.

Pandemic aside, such a hectic schedule on a square featuring 24 pitches (including practice nets) has pretty much been the norm since Dodds’ appointment in the spring of 2011, meaning time off in the summer months is usually unthinkable.

“Funnily enough, we had a Sunday with no cricket here recently,” he adds. “Other than because of the weather, it was the first day off I’ve had in summer since joining the club.”

An enquiry from The Athletic as to how he switched off on this rarest of rare occasions prompts a reply that reveals just how deep his twin passions run. “Well, I did a bit of gardening at home. And then watched Joe Root hit 150 on the TV against the West Indies!”

Tucked away amid rows of imposing Victorian terrace houses, North Marine Road boasts a timeless splendour.

A vista featuring wooden bench seating on the popular bank, sandwiched at either end by an imposing red brick pavilion and a welcoming tea room, has barely changed in 100 years.

Most of the greats have performed at this magnificent amphitheatre, from W.G. Grace and Garfield Sobers through to Fred Trueman and Michael Holding. Ian Botham and Graham Gooch made their one-day international debuts on this ground in a game that was won by the West Indies courtesy of Viv Richards’ unbeaten century.

It’s also here, just a few hundred yards from the North Sea, that Don Bradman played his final innings in England, typically hitting a century to light up the 1948 Festival.

When things go wrong — such as the morning when a technical glitch with the PA system radio frequency led to a funeral service from a nearby church being broadcast to a bemused cricket crowd — what elsewhere might be regarded as irritations become charming idiosyncrasies.

Such forgiveness, however, rarely extends to the pitch.

Yorkshire takes its cricket very seriously, as you’d perhaps expect from a county that has won a record 33 Championship titles. So, there is plenty of pressure to get it right.

Dodds, a club cricketer before assuming groundsman duties at first Stamford Bridge CC in York and then for Durham at South Northumberland CC, admits there can be nerves when watching the first hour on the opening morning of a four-day Championship fixture.

Really, though, his many years of experience — which include preparing pitches in the Netherlands for the 1999 World Cup and five weeks in Canada on behalf of the International Cricket Council (ICC) — do offer reassurance.

“I like to think I know how they are going to play before a ball is bowled,” he says. “Though there always will be two factors at play here. First, inevitably there will be quite a bit of swing.

“I can’t do anything about that, it’s down to the atmosphere. This includes when the breeze off the sea goes cooler and the air pressure changes as it hits the warmer air inland.

“The other factor is that while the ball is new, say 15 to 20 overs, it will nip off the seam. Doesn’t matter if it’s day one or day four, you put a new ball on there and it will seam. I like pace and carry and in order to get that carry, you need a bit of grass on it.”

Such faith can be explained by not only the tried-and-trusted methods that have helped deliver those eight ECB awards, but also the work done by Dodds at the very start of his tenure in 2011.

“We have a block of six county pitches,” he says. “Believe it or not, a few years prior to me coming here, I’d laid two of those with Mike Corley, a former groundsman here who taught me everything. It meant I had a bit of a head start.

“What I found at first was the county pitches were cracking quite a lot in the preparation. A lot of this job is trial and error, just to find the right path that suits the ground.

“So, I did a slight experiment in that I prepared some (pitches) the way I’d normally do it and then the others a different way that I’d heard others use. The main difference was the roller.

“Rolling is a massive part of preparing a cricket pitch. If you over-roll — and particularly when the pitches are on the dry side — you can make the surface go dusty. You can start to get breaks in the sub-soil. This can lead to the ball doing all sorts.”

Maintenance is also key to maintaining Scarborough’s reputation for producing pitches conducive to entertaining and competitive cricket.

The end of each season in mid-September brings an extensive re-seeding operation that includes the square being dressed with Ongar loam. The clay element helps both the grass grow and strengthens the root structure sufficiently to prevent cracking the following year.

An outfield many a bowler will lament during the season — it is quick and unforgiving — also requires plenty of attention, not least because its main component, a very fine black sand, knits together so tightly that the ground can be as hard as the playing square in the summer.

“We have to do some work in winter to relieve that,” adds Dodds, “as otherwise there’d be no grass left come the next dry period.”

With just a young assistant to help out during the year — another six to eight volunteers chip in during Yorkshire’s 10-day stint by the coast — the job can be intensive, especially at a ground where facilities can be so rudimentary that a washing line was erected on the field to dry a rack of sodden beach-towels being used in a mopping up operation before a one-day game against Lancashire in 2023. That fixture was eventually called off without a ball bowled.

Dodds and wife Jean do squeeze in a holiday during January, but the rest of the year is invariably spent tending to North Marine Road.

What makes this level of dedication all the more remarkable is that Dodds is 78, an age when most of his peers are enjoying the fruits of retirement. Instead, his shift when Yorkshire are by the seaside can end as late as midnight and then, if the weather is bad, resume just a few hours later.

“I’ve arrived at 4am to find the groundsheets and covers have been blown into the stand,” he says, pointing to the Peasholm Park End. ‘There’s not a lot you can do then. One time, the covers had been blown clean off the frame by the wind.

“The wind is our biggest problem, especially if blowing from the south (Trafalgar Square end). We’ve been here at midnight, trying to secure the sheets from the wind by parking tractors on top along with rollers. Anything to hold them down.”

Drainage is minimal, though this is not a big problem thanks to the foresight of those who, when building a ground that first opened in 1863, dug down almost 20 feet on the popular banking side. The debris was then used to level up the site, albeit with a nine-foot slope from the tea room to the north-west corner.

This tendency for rain water to run away to the north-west corner partly explains why a pitch totally submerged under water following a 20-minute deluge in August 2017 — “It just looked like the sea” — was clear again the following day.

Dodds may not be the type to shout from the rooftops about a job well done in often challenging conditions. But this modest man is certainly passionate about the game, as we discover when talk turns to one aspect that sets cricket apart from other sports.

Namely, how the home team can pretty much doctor a pitch to suit their own strengths, be that a dangerous spin-bowling attack or a batting line-up capable of racking up the runs on a surface so flat it more resembles a concrete road.

Dodds is no fan of such an approach.

“One of the concerns I had when I came to the club is I might be asked by coaches to prepare certain types of pitches,” he says. “It never happened but I was concerned, as it would have gone against how I like to do things.

“I’m not massively in favour of trying to get a pitch to turn. If they turn, they turn. What I’m interested in is the bowler doing his job, which is getting the drop on the ball and getting the bounce. If I provide the bounce off the pitch, it’s up to the bowler.

“If a ball is turning massively, you’re not going to realistically get many wickets. You might get a jaffa. But only now and again. Whereas if you’ve got the bounce, you crowd the bat with short-leg fielders and so on.”

This is clearly a debate he’s had many times over the years, including, as it turns out, with all-time Yorkshire great, Geoffrey Boycott, Scarborough’s Club President in 2025.

“Geoffrey has got an opinion or two,” he adds with a smile. “The last time we were chatting, I suggested if he wanted that sort of pitch then he could pop down to the beach! He laughed at that.”