He says he took the decision four years ago largely on the advice of the Edgbaston groundsman Steve Rouse, who said it would be "a minefield".
Carlos Botella, the head groundsman for the Spain-based Royal Verd company which is responsible for the turf at Manaus and six other World Cup stadiums said: "We've started to implement an emergency plan to try to save the field and improve it as much as possible, but I don't think it'll be in good condition by the weekend".
Their mascot Hoffi stumbled and lost its head, the goals kept flying at Tischfußball rates (142 in 34 games) and their groundsman provided the main talking point of the entire year.
A weary groundsman is attacking knee-high weeds with a flymo under the hot sun.
The story is a peculiar fairytale, in which the oddball anti-hero pulled from his granti-hero pulledth a prostitute, Zabrorovna, a golfromaying giant, Lord Gall, and, in thiscemetery where Belacqua was buried, a "grave conversesled Mick Doyle.Gall, withis impotent, insists that his lands can only be prostituteif his syphilitic wife is successfully impregnated by the ghost-like Belacqua.
Intrigue deepened earlier this week when Prabir Mukherjee, the 83-year-old groundsman in charge of preparing the playing surface at Kolkata's Eden Gardens, described M.S. Dhoni, India's captain, as "immoral" after he reportedly asked Mr Mukherjee to produce a pitch that would suit spin bowling.
Later, the Old Trafford groundsman admitted that he had been coerced into not watering the pitch beforehand by England's captain, Peter May.It is the same the world over; natural conditions are often exaggerated to suit the home team.
"The groundsman watered the court and I went to the bathroom to take a few minutes and get my composure back.
This trial was performed on a ground that was looking respectable yesterday after the rain, thanks to hard labour by groundsman Gary Barwell and his crew, but the climate did seem to affect the attendance – 17,000 tickets were sold but there did not appear to be that many in the ground.
Colin, our groundsman, discovered one of the bulbs had been blown off the floodlights.
When the groundsman of our local park refused to go on one particular strike, his Trotskyist supporters smashed the windows of the heated glasshouse, causing the vivid red and yellow tropical bromeliads to wither and die, in revenge at the "scab".
