Turf managers over-reacted to pace and bounce message

It's official.

In their quest to meet New Zealand Cricket's demands for pitches with more pace and bounce, the country's turf managers for the controversial Indian series over the summer went too far in their preparation.

At a long-awaited debrief on pitches in use over the entire summer, it emerged that in order to avoid criticism for not producing pitches that had the required pace and bounce, the turf managers had gone further than was suitable.

That resulted in the pitches for the two-Test series and the seven-match one-day series having excessive bounce and movement which was criticised by both teams for reducing the quality of the contests.

New Zealand Cricket (NZC) operations manager John Reid reported the debrief, held in Christchurch, had been very successful.

"The feeling about the pitches for the Indian matches was that in the quest for pace and bounce, something that NZC has been pushing for the last five years, the turf managers felt they were too conscious of those demands and had gone a little further than was necessary in their preparations," Reid said.

Rather than pulling back a little and possibly being criticised for not having enough of the required pace and bounce, the turf managers had gone too far.

Reid said that there was no common factor in the problems that developed because each venue had slightly different problems.

"What you do in Auckland is different to what happens in Christchurch. The solutions tend to be venue specific," he said.

It was a case of NZC giving the turf managers the confidence to make the specific adjustments required for their grounds on an individual basis, and not being crucified for doing that, he said.

No-one wanted to hide the fact that there were problems, but it was a fact that the solutions were not rocket science, he added.

"The debrief was a chance to get the professionals together, to get the best brains together and to discuss the best way to approach these things," he said.

New Zealand Sports Turf Institute chief executive Keith McAuliffe also attended the meeting as did the chief executive of NZC, Martin Snedden.

"It was a good opportunity for the chief executive to spend time with them, as he hadn't done that before, and it was good for him to hear some of their problems," Reid said.

Other matters discussed were the practice facilities at grounds around the country, long a source of complaint by touring teams and locals.

"We talked about having purpose-built practice facilities because it is hard for turf managers to prepare the practice pitches when they are stuck in the corner of a ground when there is a match going on," he said.

There was also discussion on the utilisation of different grass types, especially introducing couch-grass on wickets.

Couch-grass had stronger regeneration qualities which allowed a greater return for the cricket investment by getting pitches used more than once during a season.

NZC are doing experimental work at the High Performance Centre at Lincoln University with couch-grass over the winter.

Reid has asked the New Zealand Sports Turf Institute to design a research programme to find a suitable environment for the development of couch-grass pitches, whether they be with glass-houses, purpose-built heating systems or some other means.

The development of portable-pitch technology was continuing with Eden Park looking to extend its use of portable pitches to their Outer Oval.

Reid said there was no negativity towards portables and there was a growing core of players who preferred the pitches.

There was also some research being done on the greater use of "swelling clays" in pitches. The Waikari and Kakanui clays which have been so successful in Dunedin, and "swelling clays" in Australia, were effective because they reconsolidated well after being wet.