Getting stuck in

Cricket has had its share of odd ideas but using glue on a pitch is one of the queerest sounding. Yet Peter Marron, for 22 years the head groundsman at Old Trafford, has carried out experiments on the practice strips which suggest there is merit in the notion.

"I thought someone was having me on when I first heard about it," he says. "But when I saw that it had already been tried in New Zealand with good results I thought it was worth a go in our nets.

"The idea is that the glue-resin compound, PVA, puts a hard gloss on the surface so that the pitch is as good at the end as it was at the start. That could be a big advantage in the one-day game where the importance of the toss is sometimes exaggerated."

The trials were so successful that Marron used the method in July for two one-day games between England Under-19 and Sri Lanka but, with the first match washed out, no satisfactory conclusion could be drawn.

He got the idea from a Kiwi recruit to the groundstaff, who recounted how PVA had been used on the Basin Reserve ground in Wellington only to hear his tale greeted with howls of derision. "It sounded so far-fetched", Marron says. "It's more complicated than just spraying it on the surface and I wouldn't have tried it on the square if it hadn't worked as well as it did on the nets."

Moment of the month Mal Loye's double-hundred in a thumping win at Chester-le-Street, followed by 194 against Essex.