A stalwart of the East Lancashire cricket scene – who has served in every role from star bowler to groundsman – is winding down after a 62-year inning reports the Lancashire Telegraph. Known as ‘Mr Padiham’, Brian Shirtcliffe’s association with The Arbories club dates back to 1952 but he is stepping down at the age of 75, having served as everything from slow left-arm on-spinner to chairman, president, treasurer and groundsman. However the local paper says that it still remains to be seen whether he will relinquish control of his treasured wicket in retirement – despite training up his ‘partner-in-crime’, Ian Burrows, as a fellow groundsman. 

Seen from Frank Barenbrug, who is a Member of the Board of Directors of the seed specialists the Royal Barenbrug Group, on his Twitter feed was the below picture. It was captioned, "The last burial pit of a lot of artificial grass. Recycling no way and bad for our environment! Not sustainable!"


The Get Surrey website has reported that a greenkeeper at Worplesdon Golf Club was the envy of teenage girls the world over recently. According to them a member of the greens staff saw what he thought to be four young lads tresspasing on the course and went to move them on. It apparently turned out to be Liam Payne, Niall Horan, Louis Tomlinson and Zayn Malik who we're reliably informed are four-fifths of pop sensations One Direction. The word is they were all house-hunting in Surrey with one of them thought to have purchased a property which backs onto the golf club. The club itself and the greenkeeper in question hasn't confirmed the incident.

Finally, I'm not sure if this is genuine or just an attempt to get lots of re-Tweets, but it's quite funny nonetheless. The below picture was captioned on Twitter, "Our new junior greenkeeper was asked to move a the hole on a green #fail #fired."