Hi my name is Gary Barwell I'm Head of Sports Turf and Grounds at Edgbaston Stadium I've currently
been here now 10 years. I started in cricket in 1993 at Leicestershire which seems a very
long time ago now I then moved to become a Deputy Head Groundsman at Nottinghamshire (Trent Bridge)
in 2009 to look after the World 2020 practice facilities spent three fabulous years there
and then had the opportunity to come to Edgbaston in 2011
to become Head Groundsman which has now changed to Head of Sports Turf.
Originally I came in that looked after the main ground in a small little practice area
with six members of staff I'm now in charge of three sites; Edgbaston stadium which is the main
ground you see on the TV, a practice venue that's adjacent to the main ground and a new
satellite ground which is about three miles away on Portland road.
We now currently have 10 members of staff of which nine are full-time and one's a full-time
summer contract staff which grows to probably three or four more people that work through
the big match days, the test matches, the one day internationals just to help with covers.
When I first started here I looked after probably 24 probably about 40 pitches
a couple of outfields and generally it was just the match days and we had 20 games a season
of first class cricket we now have now look after 91 match pitches (three outfields, two training
complexes. We have cricket probably 130 days a year and we have 48 games this season alone
so we've our increase has gone up double. That means as well we also have all our second team
cricket based at our academy ground which has got three staff that are under my team which make up
the ten so every Warwickshire age group cricket plays at our Academy and we've got now 21 nets
that's also up there so we've got 21 nets up at our academy ground which opened this year
that's all for all the women's games and the academy we've got 24 pitches out in the middle
and the rest are made up of the practice pitches at Edgbaston which are used every day probably
nine till nine in the morning till seven at night and again that's because some of the professionals
obviously for the men's are full-time but some of the women's professional teams in the academy have
jobs as well so we have to provide facilities for the evening for them to train at the same time.
So yeah on a typical test match morning or test match day generally on average we're
probably here about five in the morning that starts probably leaving home at four
so we get here for five first job is all the covers will come off out in the middle
that will all be out here two of the guys will then jump straight on to outfield Allett Regals
and the field will be hopefully cut two ways before match day starts that's the same for every
day of the match that'll be cut at 12 mil one of my other team will then pick up an Allett Buffalo
and the square will be cut to the same height as it was cut the day before which will be 12 mil
I'll then be starting to work on the match pitch when the umpires arrive
which is about nine o'clock that'll be cut at the height that it's set through for the match
be marked out any foot holes will be done through the match where the bowlers have run through
and then we're into game time we're on watching the game which is a nice part but also that's for
any stump breakages any damage on the field any marking out that needs to be done between you know
in drinks breaks lunch we we come and work on the pitches.
If we've got a Championship pitch or another match pitch in preparation we can work on them in that
interval then we go through to tea same principles apply we come out tidy up
any footholds need checking then we get to the end of the night which is usually around six o'clock.
Six o'clock comes then all my team will come out somebody will look after the next match pitch
that we are prepping for a Warwickshire game. Another one is I'll take the Uplift out and
we'll clean the square up of debris any damage the rest of the team then are just tidying up
that takes us to about half seven nearly eight o'clock ground will be covered fully covered
and then we'll just put maybe if we've got a water program in place which we've talked
about before if it's a hot spell we'll put the water on the outfield and we'll maybe water
the square a little bit and hopefully we'll be left with the ground for nine o'clock at night
that's generally all five days weather dependent and then back home probably ten o'clock at night
and then we go again for day two. So on the main square at Edgbaston we have 21 pitches.
Each pitch is classed as a first-class pitch it's treated exactly the same
five of them in the middle are hybrids which is where theres stitching involved and they can
only be used for one-day cricket but each pitch is determined at the start of the season when we see
our fixture list. There's 17 first class pitches because of the boundary sizes and dimensions
and like I say every pitch is we talk about it at the start of the season and if we've got quite a
lot of tv games they have to be central because of the tv boxes and the gantries and the camera views
and depending on what profile games we've got they go essentially for selling out the ground
so each pitch now in my office is a pitch plan which gets sent to the ECB at the start of the
year and it allots every pitch for every game dependent on the only thing that changes that is
whether it's any scar or damage and we go through. Yeah the ideal match pitch in my opinion for for
four day cricket is one that offers good carry and bounce in all all areas throughout the game
so any defence any nicks from the batters carries to the slip cord or the keeper.
Probably day one there's a little bit in there for the bowlers for the first couple of hours
then it flattens out for a couple of days consistent bounce and carry and then spinners
will come into the game later on. On a one-day pitch it's all about the runs and the wickets and
for me so all about the runs and the boundaries so you want to see good carry and bounce consistent
and basically the ball traveling to the boundary to see nice high run scoring game.
So all 24 wickets at Edgbaston well actually all 91 wickets at Edgbaston have r9 Rigby Taylor's
grass seed it's a perennial ryegrass I've worked with it a lot it's always worked really well
for us so that's why we use it we do experiment with other ones so it's whatever suits you at
your ground regarding the soil structure here we're on Ongar plus again it's what suits your
ground stick to the soils that are you know good for your particular ground but we use Ongar Plus
we carry on top dressing with Ongar Plus that's how we do it and that's all the same for all the
pitches at Edgbaston so it's continuity for batters and bowlers wherever they are
and then regarding on the main square and on our nets we've got something called a hybrid pitch
a lot of people call them hybrids . So for want of this video it's hybrids but
they're basically stitched grass so stitch fibres nylon fibres down to about eight centimetres
to hold the pitch together. There's about I think it's about five thousand of them in
at two mil spacings and basically they're there to hold the pitch together better. So
it doesn't make a bad pitch good it doesn't make a very good pitch poor what it does do it makes
a very good pitch or a good pitch last longer so probably where it would have lasted two or three
days and deteriorated it then last 10 days and deteriorates what that's really good for is for
one day cricket when we've got a lot of fixtures back to back and we can play the same pitch in the
centre which then means we can then utilize the square a little bit more for other fixtures.
So each match pitch here Edgbaston is cut roughly the same we don't cut through the process. So if
you look at the main square at Edgbaston now it's cut at 12 mil the same as the outfield and that's
for speed of ball running across it and that's a nice height for the grass to be established on but
each match pitch we determined obviously we spoke earlier about determining when we're going to use
it and then we decide that's the pitch so what we start to do and you can see the one behind me is
going to be our next championship game everybody assumes we cut it every day we don't what we do is
we start the rolling process 14 days out when it's ready and the moisture is right in it and then
what we do is after every roll we brush it now that might be with a just a normal drag brush or
we sometimes use the SISIS combi rake brush on there and basically we brush that after every
time of use so what you find is that having more grass hopefully protects the surface from cracking
hopefully it adds carry and bounce but we're trying to keep the grass
but we're also stopping it from going sideways movement so the idea is if we can keep the
sideways movement restricted we don't get exaggerated seam movement so if it swings
then there's not a lot we can do about that but we try and keep match pitches between seven mil
for one day pitches and about 12 mil for four-day pitches and what that does is it helps protect the
surface from the elements also sometimes you can find where people think if you cut shorter that
gets harder you can find that the grass being a bit longer draws more moisture out the plant
to then make it actually harder and truer. So each match pitch we tend to obviously roll it from the
start and is obviously everybody sees that they're green because there's plenty of moisture in the
plant. So we start the rolling process 14 days out then two days after the process has started
what we started to do is to try and get more air movement around the plant we just start to brush
just lightly no mechanical just by hand with you know the drag brushes that you can buy anywhere
and then probably when the stability is in the plant and the pitch is a bit firmer and you can
walk on it that's when we start using the proper scissors combi rake brush and then what we do is
we're looking at how the grass is reacting to the combi rake brush so it's not the exact science
of oh we do it 400 times 250 we see how it's reacting so do we want it to go too fluffy for
one day cricket where you just rub your hands over it's nice what you're trying to do is just take
enough moisture out of the plant to stop seam movement. Each picture at Edgbaston is rolled
with the auto roller probably eight to ten hours dependent on time of year always minimum of eight
and then dependent on say time of year is how much more we do and how strong the grass is.
The reason we roll is to bring moisture to the surface and also give the pitch a surface
so originally you do it so you get a nice surface it's nice and flat and true and the second reason
is is the more moisture you bring to the surface that then dries off again it will stop the pitch
from cracking so with 14 days to go that's when we do our bigger rolling probably two hours a day
and then we gradually take that down to maybe like a day we're four days away from the game so what
we'll do is a nice steady 10 minutes every two hours and a light brush we might not brush so much
now just because the game's getting closer but generally this is what we use it's an auto roller
it weighs about two ton and we gradually get less and less it's all about optimum rolling doing it
at the right times rather than just doing it for the sake of doing it. So every first class match
at Edgbaston we have to do a number of things for match referee reports one of them is a clegg which
is in front of us now and that's just basically to see how hard the pitch is we record that ourselves
anyway it basically gives us inclination of how hard the pitch is. It's not one of those things
where you go chasing numbers the higher the number the more it's going to bounce that's not always
true so basically what we find here anything over 180 with the clegg reading means that
you know there's no indentation that's going to be on the pitch. So just give you some perspective of
that a premier league football club for one of these pitch would be 80 we're looking probably
on average about 230 240 upwards per match pitch you can see the difference in hardness.
That gives us that we also take moisture readings out of the pitch with a feed to probe and again we
want it around the 30 to 33 mark which then gives us a good indication that the pitch is going to
hold together nicely and they are the things we start to do. These all get fed into a match
referees report with the pitch number, amount of hours rolling, have we used the pitch before
and that goes on to a database that apparently we can get hold of but I know I've never quite
seen one and then the match referee will make how the pitch plays will be how the pitch is marked
from six to very good down to two to below average so through the season we do a number of tasks at
Edgbaston rather than have contractors in we've brought everything in-house this ranges from
verticutting the square and outfield to hollow coring to verti-draining to sand spreading seeding
every job that you see done at Edgbaston to keep the grass healthy fertilizing, spraying we
we all do ourselves and my team everything's done in-house purely so we can be on it on a given day
when we can actually have a chance to get on it when the weather's good.
During this winter it's been really disappointing to see the number of criticism groundsmen across
the country have got whether that be the amateur to the professional game we all do our job to the
best we can we all work really hard and behind every pitch there's a person I think when you
say that all pitches are poor in this country I think that's a really bad place to be
in an industry that's really striving to get staff in youngsters in
a more diverse workforce. I don't think it helps I think we've got very good pitches in all sports
I think we're world leaders in a lot of them and I just think it's very disrespectful
to just lay blame at one one certain occupations door for what's it but then unfortunately that's
the world we live in now a quick line on a tv people don't see it as a consequence.