Bathed in early-spring sunlight this week, the renamed Cloudfm County Ground in Chelmsford looked as pretty as a picture as the final preparations were being made ahead of the start of another season.
Stuart Kerrison, head groundsman since 1991, looked out from the pavilion and declared: “I think most people looking at it would think it doesn’t look in bad nick: it’s green, it’s stripy, it looks fairly flat …”
However, groundsmen are pessimists by nature and Kerrison is no different. There is an almighty “but” lying in wait to ambush the sentence: “… all I can see are imperfections. I know where all the bad bits are. It’s about 80 percent there at the moment.”
Kerrison sees “fairy rings” all over the outfield, patches where the grass has died back because of a lack of moisture and bemoans a drainage system that has to cope with a six-foot drop from end to end. He has a bucket-list of how he would spend any slice that came his way of the £1.3 million annual payment to counties the ECB are proposing if the city franchise scheme goes ahead.
Kerrison is a happy soul really and especially happy in his work that brought him runners-up spot for the fourth time in the 2016 Groundsman of the Year award, second only to Headingley’s Andy Fogarty. Considering Chelmsford is “only a provincial ground”, to use his words, and is constantly up against the big Test-match stadiums, it is no mean achievement.
The pristine square is ready for the off. The strips for the three-day game against Durham MCCU, starting on Sunday, and the opening Specsavers County Championship match against Lancashire next Friday, are already cut and primped, as well as the practice wickets on either side for batsmen and bowlers.
Apart from a new stand at the Hayes Close End, and a general lick of paint, the most notable improvement to the ground will become apparent if and when Chelmsford suffers anything more than a shower. The impromptu lakes that form in front of the Tom Pearce Stand at the River End should be a thing of the past.
“We put a bit of extra drainage around the square because all the water sheds off the covers and sheets,” Kerrison says. “Then we put a gravel band in, which is 300mm deep every 750mm to insert a gravel bed feeding into all the drains that we’ve got. We’ve had problems with the water gathering down there in the past and we’ve ended up with massive lakes. It goes eventually, but we need it to go quicker so we can get as much play as we can.
“But it’s only a stopgap as far as I’m concerned before we spend proper money on doing the whole outfield. We try to stay within budget – I spend money like it’s my own. But the outfield needs a bit more levelling, it needs a bit more drainage and it needs proper irrigation. If you’ve got £200,000 to spare we can do it next winter.”
That is for the future. For the present, Kerrison and his team of four full-timers and two apprentices are looking forward to life in Division One after Essex’s promotion. “This should be a good year,” he says. “I think we’ll stay up.”
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