Adelaide Oval curators tradition honoured in 2024 as Damian Hough prepares pitch for T20 World Cup in New York

Adelaide Oval curators (top left) Les Burdett (at right) and Damian Hough with the South Australian Cricket Association honour board (bottom left) of all curators from 1872. Bottom right: A concept of the pop-up stadium in New York to have drop-in pitches prepared by Damian Hough for the men's T20 cricket World Cup.
Images courtesy South Australian Cricket Association and International Cricket Council.

Adelaide Oval’s tradition of curators who created the legacy of the venue’s superb surface was honoured locally and internationally in 2024.

During the Australia v. West Indies Test cricket match at the Adelaide Oval, the South Australian Cricket Association unveiled an honour board of oval curators since 1872 on its avenue of honour. The curators listed were: George Gooden (1872-1873), Thomas Dickson (1875-1878), Jesse Hide (1878-1883), Charley Checkett (1883-1919), George Dunn (1919-1920), Albert Wright (1920-1938), Stanley Williams (1939-1953), Arthur Lance (1953-1980), Leslie Burdett (1980-2010) and Damian Hough (2010-).

The international accolade for that curator tradition in 2024 was Damian Hough and his team at Adelaide Oval Turf Solutions (a consultancy business) being hired by the International Cricket Council to prepare and deliver drop-in pitches to the pop-up 34,000-seat stadium being created in Nassau County, New York, for the men's T20 World Cup tournament. Six of the 10 turf trays for the pitch at the stadium were built in Adelaide before being shipped to be nurtured in Florida.

Hough, as Adelaide Oval curator since it was redeveloped in 2013, was its first with experience of drop-in pitches. But otherwise he was steeped in the accumulated knowledge gained from his predecessors Arthur Lance and Les Burdett.

Burdett began his link with sporting venues during his schooldays (or nights) when his job was to put up and take down the home-run fence for baseball games at Adelaide’s Norwood Oval. In 1969, Burdett became understudy of legendary Adelaide Oval curator Arthur Lance. They shared a bond of playing in premiership Australian football teams: Lance in the 1940 Sturt team in the South Australian National Football League and Burdett as captain of Adelaide Teachers College A1 reserves.

But what bonded Lance, Burdett and Hough was 420 tonnes of heavy clay soil from Athelstone, a northeastern Adelaide suburb. Burdett rescued the clay soil that Lance had used when Athelstone was being subdivided for housing and the developer wanted to get rid of it. Stored in the Adelaide foothills at Highbury, the clay, as 60% of Adelaide Oval and its mix of grasses, continued to be used by Hough. Hough said curating was a “dark art. It's handed down from curator to curator. I've been taught the Adelaide Oval way, which was handed down from Les (Burdett) to me and from Arthur Lance to Les.”