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Charlie’s magical mix aids the runs
Like prop forwards and estate agents cricket groundsmen keep locked away in their heads many dark secrets of the trade. Outsiders would not, should not understand.
These days it is P.V.A. glue sprayed on before a one day game, it binds the surface together in order to produce according to former Northants player Alan Fordham now the ECB Operations Manager for the first class game ‘a pitch that remains the same for both sides and does not deteriorate during the match’. But half a century ago, the solution were more natural.
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Groundsmen getting the wicket ready - Charlie (right)
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Rushden Town stalwart Gary Neal has come up with this superb photograph from 1951 showing the club’s legendry Groundsman and general factotum Charlie May (on the right) preparing a strip for the summers County championship match against Gloucestershire. The chap pulling the roller is, I am reliably informed, Ernie Cross one of Charlie’s right hand men.
So what exactly are they slushing on the hallowed turf at short Stocks?
Dave Roberts star batsman and fielder in the 1950s recons there is no harm in revealing Mr. May’s secret formula at this distance in time. Charlie used to get a large barrel full of water, and then go out into the fields to collect lots of sheep muck in a sack. He suspended the sack in the water, added clay and salt and stirred it regularly over a period of weeks. Then he wet rolled it into the square as you can see in the picture. I believe the idea came from Bert Flack who was grounds man at the Oval. I know that Charlie wrote to him to ask for some advice’.
It may not have been terribly fragrant but the preparation certainly worked in that far off summer of Burgess and MacLean’s defection to Moscow and a new BBC radio show called the Archers. Charlie’s pitch produced more than a 1,000 runs and a victory for Northamptonshire by eight wickets. Freddy Brown appeared in half the championship matches in 1951 courtesy of England calls and a shoulder injury, but he was on parade at Rushden to demonstrate his match winning abilities, even at the age of 40, Northamptonshire shaded a first innings lead by a single run. Brown hitting a vital 59. He then snapped up three quick middle order wickets in Gloucestershire’s second innings to help dismiss them for 211 and the County coasted home thanks to Dennis Brookes unbeaten 112.
Rushden staged 21 Championship fixtures between 1926 and 1963. This one proved commercially successful with spectators paying out more than £500 on gate receipts better than all but two at Northampton that year and outstripping the matches at Kettering and Peterborough. Sadly the situation was very different a decade later.
The Northamptonshire Committee resolved that the contest against Lancashire in 63 would be the last one here because of the lack of facilities for members and the public, especially catering and toilets.
They had evidently forgotten that Glamorgan skipper Johnny Clay declared in 1946 that the lunches at Rushden were the best he had ever tasted. Visiting players could always be certain that Charlie May would do his best to satisfy there every whim whether it was taking Brian Statham’s bowling boots to be mended, nipping out to buy a bottle of ink for Tom Graveny or of course buying a new packet of salt for his secret pitch formula. But I don’t think he will mind too much as heads for the Elysian Fields with a gossamer sack in search of the golden you know what from the celestial sheep.
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