Magazine - Axe Marks put Curator on Edge

By Editor in Cricket on 7th Mar 2010 13:00

Cricket pitch curators ply a mysterious trade. Testing and seeding, poking and prodding, nurturing every blade of grass like it's the last on earth, then shearing it back to something on a par with Peter Garrett's hair and crushing what's left with an industrial roller.

It can be a thankless task (no team has ever been dismissed cheaply without the pitch being to blame), but some days, the curator produces works of pure horticultural art. Shannon Cooper arrived at Camberwell Sports Ground at 7am last Saturday, and couldn't believe what he saw. ''I'd put 40 hours of work into it during the week. To come in and see the covers off, the hessian off, I thought, 'What's happened here?' It was just shock-horror, absolute shock-horror.'' Overnight, vandals had removed the pegs, pulled the covers back, removed the hessian from over the wicket, and hacked holes into the surface - on a good length at both ends, some dinner-plate-sized and 10 centimetres deep. ''I couldn't even get a key into it, let alone a shovel,'' Cooper said yesterday. ''A shovel would have just bent. Someone's used a really, really sharp axe and taken slices out of it like a woodchopper.''

What's the damage?

COOPER, 31, is in the second year of a mature-aged apprenticeship with Boroondara Council. He is deputy groundsman at Camberwell, but his boss, Matthew Harrison, is otherwise engaged on Saturdays playing Premier Cricket for Geelong, so with five hours before Camberwell Magpies were due to host North Melbourne on what was a cricket minefield, the rescue mission was all his. ''I decided to pick it all up, put everything into a bucket of water to soften the clay up, then knitted it in like dough. It was like Plasticene. Then I topped it up with some more clay, put some grass clippings on it, then rolled it for about three hours.'' Players and umpires started arriving and asking him when it would be ready for play, which Cooper thought was a bit like asking, ''Why is the sky blue?'' The clippings did their camouflage work, but the damaged spots were still a little soft to the touch. Cooper admits he was only guessing that it would work, but there was only one way to find out.
And the play rolled on

CRICKET has a regrettably long history of pitch sabotage, and even on Saturday Cooper wasn't the only groundsman set an almighty task by vandals. At Frankston, the covers were slashed and overnight rain drenched the pitch that had been prepared for the match against St Kilda. The wicket used the previous weekend was hastily brought up again, with the help of some industrial driers, and 50 overs were bowled late in the day, which Premier Cricket officials described as ''a fantastic effort''. Back at Camberwell, Cooper turned off the roller and stood back to watch the result of his handiwork. Curators are a notoriously superstitious lot - Keith Boyce, legendary groundsman at Headingley many moons ago, used to retreat to his neighbouring house to watch the first overs of Test matches, just in case his masterpiece misbehaved. It was also at Headingley that cricket's most famous act of sabotage took place, when the third Ashes Test of 1975 was declared a draw after campaigners for the release from prison of accused armed robber George Davis poured sump oil on the wicket before the last day (as observed by Tony Greig and Ian Chappell). Cooper had no reason to fret, with North Melbourne making 6-288 from 88 overs on a pitch that played perfectly. He is the first to admit to an element of luck. ''People always ask the curator, 'What's going to happen with the wicket?' You never really know anyway, you're just guessing.''
Inspired by JFK

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