Just one man and his dog at the Ageas Bowl instead of Hampshire v Kent in 2020 Championship opener

The man was groundsman Simon Lee, Hampshire’s winter recruit from Somerset, and his four-legged friend is 17-month-old redhead cocker spaniel Winston.

‘He’s come to work with me every day since I got him,’ Lee, 37, said. ‘He’s a bit of a lunatic but he breaks up the silence a little bit.’

Multi-award-winning Lee has taken over from Nigel Grey at the Ageas Bowl having been associated with Somerset for 20 years.

Lee worked his way up from apprentice to head groundsman at Taunton – the role he held for the past decade.

‘I’m a Somerset boy so it was a massive decision to make,’ Lee said. ‘I could have happily stayed as there was no particular reason to leave.

‘But opportunities don’t come around very often, especially with such a big site and the chance to improve somewhere which is an international ground.’

Like Lee, Nathan Lyon, who had his contract cancelled last week, was due to make his Championship debut for Hampshire this week.

And the highest wicket-taking Australian Test off-spinner - who was himself a former groundsman in Adelaide - would have been in Lee’s mind when cutting and rolling the pitch, but not necessarily at the forefront.

‘We were going to have Nathan Lyon, so we were going to play on decent decks because we thought he was probably the best spinner in the country so he would get the most out of it,’ Lee admitted.

‘But you've got to score bonus points with batting as well as bowling and winning games. So you need to be able to play on good decks to get the runs to help you get those bonus points in the championship to be up at the top of the table.

‘You have to back yourself to bat on some wickets and it isn’t just Nathan Lyon to produce for, we also have a decent seam attack who are capable of taking 20 wickets.

‘To be perfectly honest at the moment, though, who knows what the pitches will be like if we get any cricket this year?’

Lee arrived at the Ageas Bowl with the honour of having won back-to-back ECB Groundsman of the Year awards for one-day cricket and a perhaps undeserved reputation as the mischievous hand behind spin-friendly wickets which helped Somerset finish second in the Championship in three of the past four seasons.

His last Coopers Associate Ground strip, against Essex, saw the county docked 24 points for breaching pitch regulations.

But Lee was quick to point out that those ‘poor’ wickets were rare, but provided a mental advantage to his employers.

‘I understand the hoo-ha that goes around working at Taunton,’ Lee said. ‘But that generally comes from probably about a handful of pitches over 10 years.

‘Those stand out more than the ones which are just good pitches and there was a result and therefore no chat about it.

‘Our pitch marks were real