“I’m pleased with how the outfield has coped” – Nick discusses the wet winter
This winter has seen record-breaking amounts of rainfall across the UK. We’ve seen flooding across the country but how has it affected the playing surface at the Cooper Associates County Ground.
We caught up with our Head Grounds Person, Nick Pepper to find out.
“It’s been a frustrating winter,” he explained. “We were lucky with the renovation period because it was still quite hot in October and relatively dry. Ironically, we were having to irrigate the squares to get them germinating which you normally do by relying on the rain at that time of year. However, after Christmas it’s been difficult with all the rain that we’ve had but we’ve been regularly aerating with either a pro core to four inches or spiking deep down to about eight inches.
“We struggle to get any deeper than that, but it helps with getting the roots to get deeper and open up the surface and help increase infiltration and percolation down through into the drainage system. We’ve also been applying penetrant on a regular basis which helps reduce the surface tension of water and helps push that water through the profile. That’s also been a big help out there but ultimately the secondary drainage system has helped massively.
“Obviously, it’s been a really tough gig in other parts of the country, and I feel for Steve at Worcester, but he does a cracking job to get that in playing condition every season. Down here, I’m really pleased with how our outfield has coped with it and we’ve been able to get on the square a lot more than I thought we would. Generally, I’m happy with the grass coverage all over the square. We’ve struggled on one of the wickets because it’s just held a bit more water, but it’s firmed up now and we’ll hopefully be able to get a roller across it and start pre-season rolling.”
What will be happening out there between now and the start of the season?
“We’ll be keeping up with the fertiliser programme that we try and stick to and get as much cutting in as we can on the square, combined with a bit of aeration on the outfield. We’re now looking at getting the pre-season rolling started. The new wicket that was re-laid in 2025 needs to settle a little bit. It’s still a little bit soft as all new wickets are in their first year. It takes a while for them to settle, but hopefully we can get some regular mowing on that soon.
“It’s about planning now really. I’ve got to sit down with the Director of Cricket and the two Head Coaches and look at what surfaces across the square we’re going to look to use for certain formats. It’s not always that easy because we’re quite restricted with how many match wickets we have. The next steps will be getting the rolling started and then start prepping the first few net surfaces, the bowl-throughs and the friendly pitch for Glamorgan.”
What can our Members and supporters expect from the surfaces in 2026?
“I think people can expect similar to last year. From a red ball perspective, we all want games to go four days but also have a desired outcome. There’s a fine line and a fine balance set out by the ECB, which we will always look to work within.
“It’s not always an exact science and each surface can perform differently. We’ve got quite an old square historically and some wickets do dry out quicker than others, and some take a bit longer to get harder. When you’ve got the volume of cricket that we now have out there, it can be hard to tailor everything for those four-day surfaces when you’ve got white ball games in between.
“In white ball cricket I think it’s a case of just keep doing what we’re doing and producing high scoring games that are great for people to watch.
“We’re using ball tracking data to help out as well. Our analysts are really good at looking at the footage and relaying anything that they feel is relevant to us. It means we can track the degrees of spin and seam. We can also look at how results have gone, how many wickets have fallen, how many runs have been scored and try and get a correlation.
“We are always looking at opportunities to learn and understand how we can approach things differently to create that contest between bat and ball. Hopefully the newly developed soil and loam that we’re using will help with that as well.”
