Captain's Blog: What a wicket!
A warm Spring day with a clear sky, a verdant green field and an expectant crowd – nothing conjures up an English summer better than this.
That is exactly as it was for the first day of Gloucestershire CCC’s opening county championship game against Essex.
Having won the toss, Essex decided that they liked the look of the “greenish” pitch and decided to bowl and during the first session reaped the rewards of a good toss to win.
Wind back the clock a couple of months and that “greenish” pitch was a very different colour altogether.
Readers of the Evening Post will probably remember that the Nevill Road headquarters was likened more to a ground fit to host a re-encactment of the battle of Agincourt than cricket.
But such has been the remarkable transformation wrought upon the county ground playing surface that the prediction by club officials that it would be ready to stage first class cricket has been a well-founded.
After the coldest English winter in a decade threatened to derail the ambitious plans to overhaul the County Ground drainage system, a warm start to the Spring coupled with the right amount of rain has meant that it has been the perfect growing conditions for grass.
The last turf – grown at a secret location – was laid only in the last week of February and already albeit from outside the boundary ropes it looks a picture.
The playing surface will have five times the drainage capacity than it did this time last year and apart from a few lateral drains which will be finished off at the end of season, the work is complete.
Much of the credit must go to Gloucestershire’s groundsman, Sean Williams and his team who alongside the contractors worked sometimes into the dark to ensure that the project was finished on time.
And the spectators watching the first day’s cricket at Nevil Road were entertained with a pitch that offered something for the bowlers and not just another flat track where batsmen were able to score hundreds of runs with ease.
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