Cricket West Indies (CWI) Chief Executive Officer Johnny Grave says the body has identified the need to elevate the profile of groundsmen across the region.

Some cricket pundits have argued that there should be more of an advantage for the West Indies teams when playing at home, especially in the Test format, but the pitches across the region are not being prepared to create a challenge for opponents, and no longer have unique identities.

The ones responsible for ensuring that these pitches are prepared at the right standard are the groundsmen at each venue. But low wages, insufficient training courses regarding the science of pitch curation, and general poor welfare, make it unappealing to many, who still view this as a menial career field in the region, unlike in other places in the world where their counterparts receive better treatment.

“We’ve got to play a leadership role in that,” Grave told the Jamaica Observer recently. “We need to lead on that science, we need to lead in the training, and we need to elevate the role of groundsmen so it’s attractive. [We need] people to think about coming out of school [and thinking], ‘I want to be a curator.’

“It really is a labour of love and we need to make sure that we’ve got more and more people coming through the system and wanting to be mentored and then ultimately taking on the responsibility of being one of the curators of one of these iconic venues such as Sabina Park (in Kingston) or Kensington Oval (in Barbados).”

Grave says one of the key infrastructures missing for cricket in the region is practice facilities. The need for this is heightened by the number of teams representing CWI in various formats of cricket.

“We’ve gone from having what people refer to as ‘one team’,” he said. “In the men’s version, we’ve got a Test team, a 50 overs team (One-Day International [ODI]), a T20 (Twenty20) team, we’ve got two teams in the women’s game (T20 and ODI). We’ve got two academy teams, two A teams, two U-19 teams — over 11 teams in the West Indies. When you amplify that out in our territories, that’s an awful lot of players and teams, and they all need to train and they need to practice.

“We need to have far more facilities for playing and practising, and we need to play a leadership role in elevating the role of groundsmen, and in terms of ensuring that people understand it’s a very technical role. You have to understand the science of how you prepare a pitch and even when you understand the science — knowing exactly how much water my pitch needs at this time of year, when to cut the grass, how to cut it, how much rolling it needs, when to put the covers on, when to have the covers off — all of those things matter.”

Grave says becoming a top curator is also a learning curve of trial and error.

“You can develop the science and you know exactly how your facility needs to be prepared,” he said. “That needs education, elevating of the role within West Indies cricket, the importance of preparation of match and practice wickets.”

But former West Indies fast bowler Sir Curtly Ambrose has a sceptical view of groundsmen based on his experience with them during his playing days.

He says getting the region’s curators up to a higher level is not that simple. He says that during his playing time it was difficult to communicate with them about areas they could improve on.

“You can’t talk to them,” Ambrose told panellists on the Antigua Observer’s Good Morning Jojo Sports Show earlier this year. “You go to them and you give a suggestion, you hear, ‘What you know ’bout cricketing pitch?’

“They don’t want to listen, because they think they know everything. And I know from my experience that nobody in this world knows everything. I don’t care who they are. Sometimes I just leave them alone because I can’t be bothered.”

Ambrose says he has also heard that some prepare pitches to lengthen their work hours for more money.

“What I’ve heard from groundsmen, quietly, is that they want the pitch to last for five days, we’re talking about Test matches now,” he said. “So, they’re going to prepare the pitches for five days, because apparently, based on the rumour, these guys get paid by the day. I don’t know if that has changed, or if it’s still true. If that is the case, then it’s wrong. If you hire me as a groundsman, you can’t be paying me by the day. If it’s a Test match, you pay me for the whole Test match. If the game is done in two days, so be it.”

Grave says CWI has identified curator development as a plan for what it considers a “hugely important component” of its infrastructural growth.

“We think governments need to take a lead in improving the national stadiums in the main, but [especially] Cricket West Indies, in terms of that specialist knowledge around how you prepare wickets and pitches.”

Grave says cricket is unique because, unlike in other sports, there is no off-season, with tours and tournaments taking place throughout the calendar year.

“That’s a huge USP (unique selling point),” he said. “It’s an advantage to the West Indies, but that’s also where naturally in the northern hemisphere in that winter period, you would allow your pitches to recover and to go through new growth. We have to do that with a very disciplined approach. We have to rotate all our pitches in a very scientific and disciplined manner to make sure that you don’t completely kill them, because when you do, it often takes a lot longer for them to recover. Whereas, if you can get that pitch rotation going, if you time that rightly, the recovery’s quite quick. If the pitch is completely burnt out and trash, then it gets back to around three to four months to get back to a decent surface. All of that is within our gift.”