New Masterton wicket takes the cake

EXPERT: Former Eden Park head groundsman Mark Perham is putting his experience to work on Masterton's cricket oval. PHOTO/FILE

The man who made sure Eden Park's turf was ready for the Rugby World Cup is overseeing Masterton oval's wicket restoration.

Former head groundsman for Eden Park, Mark Perham, has been contracted to lay a seven-wicket block at Queen Elizabeth Park, a step towards setting up the oval for first class cricket.

Last week, contractors from his Auckland firm, Fieldturf NZ, carefully removed a chunk from the wicket area, large enough to lay down seven cricket pitches.

A "wicket block" allows teams to rotate between pitches during the season.

The Times-Age understands this is the first wicket renewal at the park in possibly 18 years and will cost $60,000, according to a Wairarapa cricket spokesperson.

Speaking from Auckland, Mr Perham, the managing director for Fieldturf NZ, said their brief was to change the wicket to Patumahoe clay.

"Eden Park, Basin Reserve - most cricket grounds use it.

"The soil they had [in Masterton] wasn't that great. This clay, it produces pretty good wickets."

Having said that, it is not always just about the soil.

"Cricket pitches are like a cake - you can put all the right ingredients in, but if you cook it the wrong way ... "

Pitches have to be hard, laid with a roading base of compacted gravel to start with.

"When you roll a cricket pitch, you want to roll against something hard."

The contractors use lasers to precisely set 120mm of soil to the surface.

"We call it a soil, and if you ran it through your hands, you'd think it was soil, but it has 70 per cent clay content."

It is a clay he happened on during his 11-year tenure at Eden Park, which finished in 2013.

"I looked around for a number of years to find a really good soil, and changed all the wickets there."

Doing a wicket block in winter was "not ideal" but they would get there, he said.

Shortly before the Times-Age spoke to him, his workers called to say it was raining again in Masterton - and cold.

"If we had two weeks of fine weather, we'd be done."

Mr Perham was also the turf manager at Carisbrook in Dunedin. When he left his role at Eden Park, he told the NZ Herald that getting rid of the park's tag as a low, slow wicket was a career highlight.