Development of fast and bouncy cricket pitches in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Development of Fast and Bouncy cricket pitches in Sri Lanka Most cricket batsmen in Indian subcontinent face a great difficulty in batting against fast bowlers on English and Australian fast and bouncy cricket pitches. The lack of having such practice pitches in home is the main reason for their lack of performances in fast pitches. It had been discovered that the pace and bounce of a cricket pitch is governed by clay content, clay mineralogy, sand content, organic matter content and grass content of the top layer of a cricket pitch. Six local soils and one soil from India were tested for their index properties as the preliminary step. The soils which were fiilfilling the requirement of the soil properties of fast and bouncy cricket pitch material were selected along with the currently used soil for Sri Lankan cricket pitch preparation and used for the laboratory model studies. Six cubic samples for the frictic and bounce comparison were prepared inside the laborati y from selected three soils varying the swface grass content. The co-efficient of friction (\i value) and the co-efficient of restitution (e value) were determined by the bounce test and friction test respectively. Soils which had low value and high "e" value were selected as suitable soils for the further proceedings of the research. MU and TY along with MT (Mixture of both MU and TY) were selected to carry on further studies in an actual cricket pitches in order to check their ability to generate pace and bounce. Besides selected area of the cricket pitch was daily photographed and surface crack density was analysed using MATLAB software. MU was selected as the most suitable soil from among all tests soils and recommended to be used for the development of local fast and bouncy cricket pitches in Sri Lanka.