Water worries as Melbourne pitches crumble

It's getting hot in Melbourne, and water is in short supply. So too, writes Gideon Haigh in the Herald Sun, is common sense among the bureaucrats of Melbourne.

Mayor John So announced on Monday that Melbourne's fountains would flow and bubble again, thanks to an alleviation of the water crisis. There was no announcement last week, however, when it emerged that the City of Melbourne planned to start ripping out pitches for turf cricket, ostensibly as a water-conservation measure.

The City of Melbourne's attitude to cricket, and community sport in general, is grudging. Cities are for culture, festivals and mayoral personality cults. Sport? That's for ugh, suburbs, and the teeming unwashed multitudes.

"Think of cricket on turf as chess," Haigh writes, "cricket on artificial surfaces as noughts and crosses."