Walk round a cricket ground in the closing days of the season and you are quite likely to see several hefty sacks parked near the boundary, probably resting on a pallet.

Inactive they may look but those bags are the key to next season and those ahead.

While players put their feet up at some stage of September, switched to another sport or even remembered they have a partner who would rather like to spend a Saturday or two with them, it’s a key month for grounds staff.

Cricket squares must be renovated and “put to bed”. All the pitches will have been used, the remaining grass being stripped off and the entire surface scarified to remove unwanted material which builds up “thatch”, the enemy of all curators given the deadening effect it has. It requires machinery to be done thoroughly.

Then comes the seed before the content of those sacks comes into play – a layer of loam which then has to be carefully levelled. Along the way, special attention is paid to any damage caused during the summer’s battles, particularly at each end where bowlers follow through and batters take guard. Some more seed can then be applied, if required, then the square should be ready to regrow during the winter months.

If all that sounds straightforward, it is anything but. Much care and expertise is required, plus some help from the weather. Grounds staff have to work with nature but occasionally find themselves fighting against it, employing expertise and tricks learned down the years. There are courses run by the Grounds Management Association but it’s also an art which is self-taught, given observation and experience plays such a key role.

Bill Clutterbuck, who was in charge of Guildford’s Woodbridge Road for two decades, would “put down” pitches as he went through the season, arguing that it was unnecessary to leave it all until the end and risk having to combat bad weather.

Sometimes, if pitches have been misbehaving or are looking tired, it takes something more than the usual autumn work. When Harry Brind arrived at The Oval in 1975, his promising career as a Chelsea striker ended by knee trouble and having been groundsman at Chelmsford, he found slow and low pitches which bred attritional cricket.

Brind’s radical treatment entailed digging down a foot, which enabled him to discover there was little of substance on which to work. Being a man of Essex, with contacts aplenty there, he discovered just what he needed from the thousands of tons of clay being excavated to build the M11. So instead it was employed to create the fast and bouncy tracks – a long way from the “roads” which bowlers hate – which still form the basis of the square on which Lee Fortis has created award-winning surfaces in recent seasons. Brind took around five years to complete his task and it was a considerable investment by Surrey at the time, given they had little money to spare. His expertise would assist his fellow professionals across the world in time.

However much work is required, grounds staff – keeping an eye out for frost, the greatest winter enemy – will look forward to getting on the roller for spring preparation and producing the first pitches of the next season, hoping those autumn labours were well spent.

By Richard Spiller