Jamaica: Sabina pitch to be ready in October (5 Aug 1998)

5 August 1998

Sabina pitch to be ready in October

The Jamaica Gleaner

The Sabina Park cricket pitch will not be ready for any cricket matches before October.

According to Patrick Gordon, a member of the pitch committee, everything is progressing well and indications are that cricket will return to the venue in two months.

"Right now we are planting grass on the pitch and we are waiting for the grass to mature. We are hoping to start preparing one pitch at end of this month," Gordon said.

"There are four pitches on the square but we will be concentrating on one pitch first. After we prepare the pitch we will then test the pace and bounce of the wicket to see how it plays.

"We are hoping to start testing the pitch in September. We don't have any doubts that the pitch will play well. It will and we are confident that there will be consistency. We just want to get an idea of the bounce and the pace," he said.

"We had given the Jamaica Cricket Board of Control (JCBC) a schedule and in that schedule we gave them a time in which we think the pitch would be ready to accommodate cricket matches and the time we gave them was around the end of September," Gordon said.

"The pitch should definitely be ready to play games by October. As a matter of fact, I think games are scheduled for the ground in October," he said.

If all goes well, the first game at the Park since the abandonment of the first West Indies-England Test in early February might be a regional Red Stripe Bowl one-day match.

Following the abandonment of the Test, executives of the JCBC came under fire and were pressured to resign. They all offered to vacate their posts but the offer was not accepted by the board members.

A pitch committee has since been set up by the Kingston Cricket Club comprising members of the club and the board to oversee the relaying and preparation of the pitch.

Source :: The Jamaica Gleaner (https://www.jamaica-gleaner.com/)