How To Dry Cricket Hardwicket Pitches?

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Kahuna

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Hey guys,

Does anyone have an ideas on how to dry out wet hardwicket surfaces (that green matting stuff). We have missed out on playing a few times this season due to the pitch being very wet. Covers are not an option at the moment....

We have thought about blower vacuums, what do you guys out there use?

Cheers
 
Short of spending a fair bit of cash buying some heavy duty bit of kit, it sounds like a problem. I take it you're talking about turning up at the pitch after it's been raining over night or prior to a game?
 
Kahuna said:
Hey guys,

Does anyone have an ideas on how to dry out wet hardwicket surfaces (that green matting stuff). We have missed out on playing a few times this season due to the pitch being very wet. Covers are not an option at the moment....

We have thought about blower vacuums, what do you guys out there use?

Cheers
Click to expand...

Go to a hardware store or builders merchants and purchase a 2m x 20m roll of plastic. Then get some bricks and cover the pitch overnight before the match. Thats the cheapest option. Other than that you would need a heavy roller of some kind to really squeeze it out of the carpet and off the pitch.
If you do cover the pitch overnight and the next day is sunny make sure you take the plastic off early as it sweats and some moisture can stay under there althogh its obviously not as bad as rain.
If the pitch is at ground level or slightly below though this wont work as water seeps out of the surrounding ground and onto the pitch. In this case your pretty much stuffed if it rains at all.
 
That was going to be my next suggestion, I've been at games this year that have turned into disasters mid-game, all for the want of a few cheap sheets of plastic to cover the wicket on the arrival of a quick, short heavy shower. I'm assuming it's probably a pitch in a town where if you were to do that, the local Bogans would come along and nick the plastic or just chuck around all over the pitch and therefore not a feasible idea as the sheeting would have cost you around $40?
 
You could try sweeping it with a very fine broom to remove the surface water and any other water that way. A large sponge of squeegee that you could use with a handle to move over the surface to soak up the water works wonders as well.

Failing that, the only way to protect and synthetic/hard wicket is to cover it.
 
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