Rewarding ground staff, old ritual in Indian cricket

Recently, former India captain and the new head coach Rahul Dravid had rewarded the Green Park Stadium’s ground staff a sum of Rs 35,000 for preparing a sporting pitch after the conclusion of the first Test against New Zealand. 

Later, the Indian team rewarded Rs 35,000 to the Wankhede Stadium ground staff after the second Test. The instances of the Indian players and the team’s generosity have been there in the past too. 

Re-calling something of similar sorts, Mahesh who was Eden Gardens’ head groundsman for 25 years had taken care of the pitches at the Bangabandhu Stadium against all odds. 

“The final-eve witnessed a downpour and when I reached Bangabandhu Stadium early in the morning on the day of the final of ICC Knockout Trophy, the ground resembled a large swimming pool. The Bangladesh Cricket Board (BCB) officials had given up. I asked for some extra buckets and additional manpower to do what looked like an impossible job. The stadium’s drainage wasn’t perfect. Things had to be done manually,” Mahesh, now 70-plus, recalls for The Indian Express.

“The secretary of the BCB gave me a hug and tucked a 100-dollar bill in my pocket,” he said. 

Mahesh and his colleagues have been rewarded by the Indian players after the domestic matches too. “Teams gave us bakshish after domestic matches as well,” he said. 

Cuttack’s Barabati Stadium curator Pankaj Babu revealed that while the curators supervise the pitch and the ground preparations, it is the ground staff that does the main job. 

“See, we supervise pitch and ground preparations. But ground staff does the main job. Players know that and hence reward them. This has been happening for long. Sometimes, even foreign teams have done it,” he said.