Grass gurus: Barwell on “privilege” of leading turf team at Edgbaston

The 2024 season has been among the longest in history with 178 days from first ball to last. Head of Sports Turf Gary Barwell has reflected on one of the most demanding campaigns in his 13-year tenure at Edgbaston.

“Do you know how many times we mowed the outfield last year? 480 times. We’re talking about fractions of a millimetre sometimes. Grass can be a precise science and we want our surfaces to be perfect.”

Barwell and his 10-strong grounds team are gurus of grass.

This summer – well, spring, summer and autumn – they prepared a total of 17 pitches for 48 games over 58 days of the 2024 campaign.

The 49-year-old has worked in cricket for three decades and, despite the demands of the job and scrutiny from pundits and players alike, he still describes working in the sport as an “honour and a privilege”.

“Cricket is a unique sport,” said father-of-two Barwell. “I’ve worked in it for 30 years and I can honestly say it’s been a privilege. It’s my 13th season here now so it makes me feel very old. I was 36 on my first season.

“It’s been a tough year. And it’ll have been tough for turf teams up and down the country.

“It’s been a combination of things. We had a lot of (bad) weather at the start, so it’s harder to ease your way into the season; a lot of variants of games, and switching between the kookaburra and Dukes and trying to provide pitches accordingly.

“We also played two white ball quarter finals here. Then there’s the World Championship of Legends event which was great, big crowds and new faces here. But again that’s five days, two games a day, so a lot of cricket.

“Plus the players are training more than ever, 155 days of training across both the women and men so lots of work on our Colts ground.

“Luckily I’ve got some of the most dedicated people working with me in the business. We have a standard that every day is a Test match. We want every pitch we prepare to be at that standard…and everyone in the team buys into that. 

“The guys are Bears as much as anyone. When the team lose, they hurt. They were gutted when we lost the Blast quarter final. They support Warwickshire, they’re part of the club.

“In our job you have to give everything all of the time otherwise if you don’t you’ll see standards slip.

“They work long hours, we’re no different to grounds teams across the country in that respect, but then they’ll have the satisfaction of seeing Virat Kohli or another great player hitting a century on a pitch they’ve prepared.

“And when that happens you’ll be like ‘I helped provide that’…even in just a small part.”

The season closed less than two weeks ago but Leicester City fan Barwell and his team are already well underway with their plans for 2025.

“The moment the last ball is bowled at the end of the season we’re straight on,” added Barwell, “sometimes before the players have even left the field, to start preparing for next season! 

“We will cut the square really short, probably about 2 or 3 millimetres, then we have a machine called a scarifier which cuts the debris out of the surface. We’ll do that 5 or 6 different ways so just a little bit of grass is left. It gets rid of all the organic matter so it’s all nice new fresh grass for the following year.

“Then the square is seeded up and top dressed. Then I’ll go on holiday with the family and get the golf clubs out! The team will also get a well-deserved rest.

“But I love what I do. We’ll be ready for next year, the boys will be recharged. We just want a nice bit of weather. That would be good.”