Out-of-season coaching in a marquee is nothing uncommon – loads of counties do the identical. The innovation at Loughborough is the surfaces, conceived to provide England groups extra publicity to circumstances present in locations like Australia and South Africa.
The senior males occur to be touring these two international locations over the next two winters. The ladies, Lions and Younger Lions are all in South Africa now, or heading there quickly. There’s a longer-term ingredient, too, with the hope England gamers will profit for a few years to return.
Tempo and bounce is as indigenous to the UK as a polar bear. Ben Stokes requested for such surfaces throughout final 12 months’s Ashes, although Mitchell Starc was extra on the cash when he stated: “I do not suppose you get quick wickets in England”.
Even earlier than Stokes’ request, there was a plan in place to make the web pitches in Loughborough a cricketing science experiment. Andy McKay, the ECB’s pitch and grounds advisor, had “12 months staring into the void” till surfaces had been constructed greater than two years in the past.
McKay’s problem was clay. Quick, bouncy pitches often come from a soil with a excessive clay content material, but clay isn’t any good friend of the ryegrass that grows on this nation.
Clay additionally cracks. The fast Waca in Perth, Australia, has a excessive clay content material, however produced cracks large enough for a small baby to fall into. Not superb for the security of a observe pitch that can be used time and again. Only for good measure, there was additionally a need for McKay’s pitches to take spin early.
“We examined completely different sand shapes, discovering a sand that might give us hardness, combining parts of clay, silt and particle distribution to be sure that we had a high-binding energy soil,” says McKay.
The outcome, if we need to get actually geeky, is a mixture of clay, pure sand and sandy loam. “We have arrived at one thing slightly bit funky,” he says. “For need of a greater description, it’s a designer cricket soil.”
Glen Chapple, with almost 1,000 first-class wickets to his title and a fast-bowling advisor for the Lions, describes the pitches as “fast”. McKay believes the method may be repeated at a significant floor if a county is prepared to undergo the method.
“There is a chance for a venue in the event that they wished to do one thing a bit completely different,” he says.
