| “The pay isn’t great. The hours are long. We had a really good apprentice last year, Dan. He left about the same time as me. Gone to work for a university. It’s more time off, more money. People dip their toes in, you know, have a little look at it, and then think, ‘Do I want to be doing this for the rest of my life?’ “Four-day cricket for me became such a grind. It’s 12-hour days and a lot of the time you’re doing it for 200 or 250 people. You’d get home about half eight and you’re up at dawn the next day. I won’t miss four-day cricket whatsoever. “I spoke to Craig [Harvey] at Northants the other day and he says, ‘You get to mid-season and you’re just running on empty.’ There’s a lot of hours people don’t see. A lot of unseen work. And not having a break – I was guilty of that. “A lot of head groundsmen are quite controlling. I didn’t want to take any time off, felt I had to be there. I always try to encourage the younger head groundsmen to take some time off during the season, but it’s such a difficult thing to let go.” Ward was sustained by the camaraderie among a close team at Leicestershire and by a WhatsApp group where the nation’s chief groundskeepers share not just personal problems but professional solutions, nursing each other through advances in sports turf technology. Three times he returned from the Grounds Manager of the Year Awards, the Grounds Management Association’s big annual get-together, with a trophy and another four with commendations, most recently in November. At which point, he decided to go. “I’d been away on holiday. I had a good think about it and I handed my notice in,” he says. “It was a very strange feeling. A lot of relief and joy, but then you feel lost for a bit. “I’ve been back a couple of times. You work somewhere for 40 years and then you pop back in and even though no one made me feel like an outsider, I felt I was. Just little things, like I always had my own seat there, and someone’s in my seat now.” So to Ward’s first summer of freedom (but for occasional mowing jobs) since he was a child. “I booked a month in Greece for the end of May,” he says. “We like going on walks and picnics, so we’ll do a lot of that. And I’ll go and watch some T20, see the lads. I won’t watch any four-day cricket, though.” Optimism in the 80s It often feels like cricket is in a state of permanent peril and crisis, the only change being precisely what looks certain to end the game as we know it this week. But researching this week’s Spin took me back to the summer of 1985 and the start of Ward’s debut season as a cricket groundsman, a campaign previewed in the Guardian by an extraordinarily optimistic Matthew Engel. “The English game is managing to exude remarkable, pink-cheeked health,” he wrote. “After four successive summers blessed by cricket that might have been plotted in advance to bump up public interest, and weather that has often been delightful and almost always passable at the strategic moments, the counties find themselves if not exactly rich, then at least away from the poverty line. “If county secretaries look depressed this spring it is generally because they cannot find a young fast bowler or a new slow left-armer, not because the bank is about to foreclose. The England team has started winning again and is almost ideally matched against a beatable but still challenging Australian side. Advance ticket sales have been excellent. And in the middle distance there are signs of a new generation, of batsmen anyway, that could do great things for English cricket … “Let us offer a springtime prayer: for a summer of sunshine, good cricket and endeavour, and the Ashes won back from a full-strength Australian side. And let’s be able to concentrate on a bit of honest-to-goodness Australia-hating and selector-bashing. That’s what the game’s all about.” Oh to be able to pen such an article in 2025, though looking on the bright side we’ve probably got the selector-bashing covered. Quote of the week “Dr Shama Mohamed, national spokesperson of the Indian National Congress, made certain remarks about a cricketing legend that do not reflect the party’s position. She has been asked to delete the concerned social media posts from X and has been advised to exercise greater caution in the future. The Indian National Congress holds the contributions of sporting icons in the highest regard and does not endorse any statements that undermine their legacy” – Pawan Khera, chair of the INC’s publicity department, after Mohamed posted that she thought Rohit Sharma “needs to lose weight” and is “the most unimpressive captain India has ever had”. The INC is the second-biggest party in the Indian parliament. Still want more? Jimmy Anderson, 42, wants to play in the Hundred. Jofra Archer is on course to be part of England’s pace attack in Tests again, writes Ali Martin. And Ali finds that Brendon McCullum has plenty to ponder about England’s white-ball future. Memory lane 27 June 1930: The R101 airship emerges from low cloud over Lord’s during the second Ashes Test match in which Australia thrashed England by seven wickets, with Don Bradman scoring 254. | 