Rain in County Cricket/England

[DPRA]

Well, as we now all know about how un-reliable the British summer can be ( I have a radical idea that could help stop county games being posponed because of Rain and Waterlogged pitch.

The current Roses game has been hit heavily with the first day washed out, and no play before Lunch today with a heavily waterlogged pitch. With this is in mind something needs to be done by the ECB to stop more games being hit by the weather.

We all go to cricket to watch a full game, not a reduced game, so the ECB should do all they can to stop games being called off.

We have seen how much money that they have in there pockets (TV Rights, Income from England test, ODI, & T20 games) so, why instread of keeping the money and only giving 12% to Grass roots levels, why don't they invest the money into county grounds, and pay a percentage of the cost for a state of the art drainage system for EVERY county ground, we all seen how effective it was in the England game at Lords in which the ground was fully cleared and playable in under 2 hours.

This is part is probably the most Radical and has least chance to happen, why don't they invest money into every county ground for some sort of roof?

If any one of these are invested in then spectators, and cricketers (who travel half of the country for a 4 day game, only for it to be called off) will be happy and we will be one big cricket loving nation.

Thoughts?

 

[Sureshot]

Excellent drainage can only do so much. It won't make much difference in consistent torrential downpours. They have a set limit of how much rain they can cope with per hour. I think the Lord's drainage is something like 30mm of rain per hour (or some figure like that, anyone find it?). As for OT, well the Lancashire board are planning to put their own system in for next year.

I think Lord's spent £1.25M on drainage.

 

[DPRA]

Excellent drainage can only do so much. It won't make much difference in consistent torrential downpours. They have a set limit of how much rain they can cope with per hour. I think the Lord's drainage is something like 30mm of rain per hour (or some figure like that, anyone find it?). As for OT, well the Lancashire board are planning to put their own system in for next year.

I think Lord's spent ?1.25M on drainage.

But Yeah fair enough it can only do so much, but every little bit helps massivly. And the ECB Havent really done anything at all to try and help counties who have high rainfall (Lancashire and other counties).

But, why don't counties have covers that go across the whole pitch? Because most of the time, the game is called off because of the out field being wet, and thats where the covers help.

 

[barmyarmy]

Maybe we should move more towards indoor cricket

 

[Sureshot]

The ECB can't control the rain (to point out the obvious ). This has been an unusually wet last two weeks or so.

That would need a lot of covers. You have to remember these need to be stored somewhere. Even a small ground with a boundary of exactly 60 Metres all around would need coverage of nearly 380 square metres. I reckon most grounds would only cover a third of that atm.

 

[King Pietersen]

Haha, where exactly are they going to get covers big enough to cover an entire outfield? Then, where will they store them ? They won't exactly roll up into a nice easy manageable ball. It's England, it rains, there's nothing the ECB can do about it, apart from building a Weather Machine like the one on Command and Conquer, but I'm sure that'll be your next brilliant idea, so I'll leave you to explain it .

 

[Sureshot]

Which C&C is that on?

 

[King Pietersen]

Red Alert 2 iirc.

 

[lightbulb]

Let's just give each stadium it's own roof like the Millenium Stadium.

 

[.::Stevo::.]

Let's just give each stadium it's own roof like the Millenium Stadium.

Yeh, like the Telstra Dome here in Melbourne, problem solved

 

[SciD]

Or fire missiles in clouds to stop them from raining like Chinese tried in openig ceremony of Olympics.

 

[Kev]

As far as I'm aware the ECB has made grants available to all Test grounds for the Lord's style drainage. As well as grants to all first class clubs for Floodlights. I would guess in time that grants for this drainage system will be available to all clubs.

I am slightly confused by where you mention the contribution to grass roots cricket. Are you suggesting that 0% go to grass roots so this gets paid for? Because thats a massive backwards step if it is. Far better would be a fairer distribution of the cash, rather than the test clubs getting most of it. Or even a fairer distribution of prize money for things like T20. I believe Middlesex would have pocketed £40000 for winning the T20 this year, thats peanuts, it probably cost the clubs more than that each to appear at finals day, whereas the real winner out of the event would have been Hampshire who quite frankly sucked this year. I reckon a guy sitting near me spent nearly £40000 on beer on his own!

 

[TC Ink]

Let's just give each stadium it's own roof like the Millenium Stadium.

Haha, it would be cheaper to just move England to somewhere sunnier :laugh

 

[lightbulb]

Haha, it would be cheaper to just move England to somewhere sunnier :laugh

Yeah, do you mind if we just move just besides Australia,or make ourselves a Carribean island, either way would be nice.

 

[smssia0112]

A roof in every ground would be nice, but there are several massive problems:

1) It would take years, probably decades to complete all, as grounds would be out of action for long periods and they couldn't all be done at once.
2) It would cost a hell of a lot of money, probably more than the ECB even has to spend let alone that it would want to dedicate.
3) As shown in the Telstra Dome, the surface suffers a lot when a roof is brought in. The ground becomes harder to manage, and often you find it wet because there's not enough sunlight coming through.