The light side of cricket

Who wants to be a groundsman? It is a hard, thankless task that revolves around long lonely hours as you slave to the weather gods.

Around the cricketing globe at the moment, groundstaff have had their work cut out as rain on a number of continents dictate the terms. The steamy hot humid days of cricket in Bangladesh and Sri Lanka have been shortened of late, as at times, torrential rain has intervened.

At the P.Sara Stadium in Colombo, which is Sri Lanka's oldest test venue, there are groundstaff with a difference.

It has had a history of a female curator and the current person in charge is a petite old lady who has stamped her authority for some forty years.

She's got some interesting helpers as well. Every day the cricket is played on her turf the local jail in Colombo releases 100 prisoners to lessen her workload. She is very dilligent in policing their duties!

My favourite groundsman story revolves around the curator at my old club side in South Australia in the late 70's. He was a man of about 60 who had overseen the preparation of the pitch as the Glenelg Oval for 30 years.

He was well known for his love of a pint or two... or ten at his local pub across the road on Friday afternoons.

One week, the day before our weekly Saturday encounter, his thirst pangs got the better of him earlier than usual.

He decided to zip over to his local for a couple and return later in the afternoon to complete his pitch preparation.

One thing led to another and a solid session later, our man was less than stable on his bar stool. He eventually left the pub about 9.00pm and with an hour or two of rolling still to do he returned to the pitch.

He completed his task about midnight in complete darkness and staggered home.

The following morning I arrived at the ground early and ventured to the middle. You can imagine my shock when upon inspecting the wicket I noticed he had rolled his torch in to the pitch on a good length!

Talk about a light roll.