Plymouth Cricket Club

To my complete surprise I've been given 3rd place in the Groundsman of the Year awards 'club' category.
This is quite an achievement for a club still currently without a lease on either of their grounds.
Whilst the award is given as a 'personal' award, without doubt it is the team effort within PCC that allowed it to happen.
I'd like to thank everyone at PCC who helped make it possible specifically Ken (for pointing me in the right direction and keeping an eye on what I was doing), Al & Joe for giving as much of their time, and John C (for all his Saturday morning work). I know there are a whole host of other people who have helped and many are now starting to realise the vast amount of work that both Ken & Fred have put in over the years.
I'll post some more information as and when I've got it.

grounds saturated.

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Monday, July 02 2007 @ 09:32 AM BST
Contributed by: jlawrence
Views: 663

Thought I'd post this to help a few people understand a bit more about why we are struggling to get games on. It will also serve to show why we do some seemingly odd things - like watering in the rain :)

There are various identifiable stages of water levels within a cricket square.
1) Saturation point.
2) Field capacity (approx 35%)
3) Permanent Wilting Point (approx 28%)
Saturation point is the point at which the water table is effectively at the surface - ie the soils can hold no more water.
Field Capacity is the point at which drainage within the surface stops - ie there is practically no more downward movement of water within the surface.
Permanent Wilting Point is the percentage water within the surface when the grass plant roots can no longer extract water from the soil and they start to die.
Both of our playing surfaces (Peverell Park and Mount Wise) are currently at or very close to saturation point as can be seen by the fact that even a brief (10 minute) shower results in standing water on the surface.
To move between saturation point and Field capacity takes approx 3 days of dry weather - this can be speeded up with some wind and rain.
Under 'normal' summer conditions the squares can easily handle an hour of rain and be playable within an hour or so afterwards. Under the current conditions it is taking around 4 to 5 hours for the square to become playable after just a small 15 minutes spell of rain.

When we actually produce a 'perfect' track the water content will be around 20% which is as you can see is below the Permanent Wilting Point. If the grass is held in this state for too long then it simply cannot recover and will die. This is why even if it's raining at the time you'll often see me watering the track after a Saturday game - I simply can't rely on mother nature to provide enough water for the plant to recover.

We're not in as bad a position as some people further up country. We need at present at least 12 hours of dry weather to be confident of putting a game on, I know some people who are needing 48 hours.

thanks for the help

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Friday, June 22 2007 @ 10:05 PM BST
Contributed by: jlawrence
Views: 609

On behalf of Fred & myself I'd like to thank everyone who came up to PP to help get the twenty20 game, against Civil, on.
I can guarantee if you hadn't helped like you did then the game would not have gone ahead.
I'll probably miss some here so apologies to those:
Thanks to:
Burkey,
Has,
Chris,
Chris' mate,
PD,
Gilly
and of course Fred.

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