Sunday 14th June

Last Friday I left John and Roy to put the covers on and spent the day at Harlow Carr learning to weave with willow.

The result was quite pleasing:

The forecast for the weekend was poor with what appeared to be little chance of play on Saturday. I went through the motions of preparing the square and pitch on Thursday thinking that there was no chance of any play.

Overnight rain on Friday left a lot of water on the cover, but the rest of the square took it well with hardly any surface water.

At 9 o'clock, with rain still in the air, John and I set about removing the water from the covers. Having had the petrol generator repaired this was the first time to properly test out the water pump. After changing the suction hose, it worked and we were able to remove much of the water without using the BowDry.

The half inch hose is a little too small to remove the water rapidly but now I know that this method of water removal works, I will buy a 1" water pump.

The rain stopped mid morning and by 1.30pm the outfield was dry and having given the pitch a quick cut and roll all was set for a game of cricket.

As the afternoon went on the weather improved with the sun coming out around 4pm.

The pitch received good comments with something in it for batsmen and bowlers if they found the right spot.

There was not much damage to the pitch  as not that many overs were bowled so there is little repair work to be done. However, pitch number 3 was finished with last weekend so tomorrow that will need repairing and 'putting to bed' for the rest of the season. Thanks to one of our players with large feet there is a big foot hole to repair! The batsmen have done a pretty good job making their 'mark' in a variety of methods so it will take a while to repair.