Horsham City Oval is in superb condition for Horsham Cricket Association’s opening round – the first competitive sport to be played at the Wimmera’s premier ground since last summer.
Horsham Rural City Council’s operations team has worked continuously through the COVID pandemic and, on the eve of the cricket season, there is a sense of excitement and pride in the facilities on offer.
Leading Hand of Turf Care David Gove explained that preparing a cricket pitch was an intricate process.
Works include scarifying the wicket table in four different directions, top dressing the wicket table with Merri Creek soil and topping up low areas across the ground. Cross rolling of the whole wicket table evens out any little side humps and bumps.
“In addition to the levelling, we fertilise the whole wicket table to bring the couch out of dormancy,” Mr Gove said.
“Once the couch starts to grow well with warm sunny days we start to mow the whole wicket table down to a height of 10mm, so the couch can grow horizontal and creep over any bare areas.
“We have sprayed the wicket table with a preventative fungicide and insecticide, then we start to mow the first pitch that will be used for the game,” he said.
Mr Gove and his team have to continue the mowing regime to slowly start to lower the height down from 10mm to 5mm and continue to heavy roll the pitch up and down.
“Leading up to the first game we will hand water the pitch and heavy roll up and down to bring out the moisture to harden up the surface,” he said.
“On the week of the game we will mow the pitch three times, lightly hand water the pitch, then seal the pitch with dry clippings on any bare areas, and heavy roll as many times as possible leading up to the Saturday.”
