What with the Kwik cricket and the continuing hot weather 30 degrees again today, the paddock is falling to bits and crumbling. The area where the batsman stands is a dust bowl and is getting more and more hollowed out and looking more like a dip. You can obviously fill it in and water it, but without there being any grass roots to bind it all together it just dries, cracks and disintegrates within a week or so with just a little light use. With heavy use it can go from a sound surface to a dust bowl in a matter of hours and I can see now why concrete wickets and matting are a popular option in places like Australia.
It also kind of reinforces the need for me to develop a batting end at the other end of the wicket this autumn in order that we can leave the currently used end to recover and for the grass to re-establish itself and for a root system to bind the surface together and improve the chances of the wicket surviving heavier use the following year. Realistically we need to have a couple of strips, but there's no way that this could happen in the paddock -or maybe?
