Summer Sports - Cricket


other on whether the rain’s going to affect us. We’ll lose the occasional pint because we stayed dry or vice versa.”


The square consists of a substantial twenty pitches, which are usually irrigated statically, although the sprinkler moves, because they always need to keep some of the pitches functional.


To the west of that, where the airflow is poorer than the rest of the pitch, they rarely need to do so. Over there also, the nutrients meant for the grass are swallowed up by the other plant life lining the ground. That area suffers from, in Gareth’s words, “chronic compaction”, and the team have


verti‐drained, Earthquaked, Shockwaved, topdressed with sand, but these are all futile to an extent, as those circumstances represent shallow maximum root growth. They use a John Deere 3225C outfield mower, and take it to 25mm during winter, and 15mm during the season. The square is 10mm when played on, and the pitches might be 5mm for matches.


It is a batsman’s pitch, on which Ollie opens the batting weekly. He said: “Historically, it’s been a spinner’s club, and we’ve left lots of grass on it.” “We get a lot of people coming to the pitch and saying it looks a bit too green, but


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the reality is that, on pitches like this, greener can actually mean a more interesting game, because at least it’ll have a bit of zip, pace and bounce in it.” “Since our great spinners left, we plan it for the batsmen instead. If we cut it low, there’ll be nothing in it. We’d have 350 plays 320 out there in a 50‐over game.” “If we leave grass, though, you can do a bit with the seam as well. Overall though, it remains a batsman’s pitch, and that comes back to the criticism we talked about earlier, that all the amateur pitches in our country tend to have similar characteristics.” “That’s because, at least at local league level, you don’t get the seamers that have that extra yard of pace to get anything out of the conditions with which we’re faced.” “And, as we said at the beginning, it’s such an old square. You have to work that extra bit harder to get something out of that type of pitch.”


“That’s why we’d like the renovation, and the character of the pitch would probably change completely when we have had it relaid.”


PC FEBRUARY/MARCH 2018 I 95


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