During the afternoon, the rain continued sporadically, interspersed with short periods of sunshine and thunderstorms. This has meant that I've been able to get in the paddock with the roller and give it a bit of a going over in preparation for the next batch of good weather.
The earth has softened up so much that the deep cracks that were appearing have all now disappeared as the rain has been absorbed into the earth and made the earth swell. The rolling has now smoothed the surface out nicely and if the drying isn't too rapid we may get a few weeks of decent batting conditions before the surface crazes again and starts to break up.
Usually by this time of year the grass is yellow and the surface has gone through 3 stages - deep cracks, small crazing type cracks and the final flaky and crumbling surface, making it only any good for bowling on.
Here's the net being used to stop all the clay/earth sticking to the roller. This also helps to show up indents in the surface if it's uneven.
We've just got to hope now that there is a decent amount of drying that occurs over the next 24 hours, otherwise the football kids will get in there and run all over it damaging the surface. I've also cleaned up all the dog crap that was in there. I can't believe it, but people know kids go in there all the time playing football, but they take their dogs in there and let them off the lead so that they can s**t where they like and they don't clean it up.
