Cricket: Eden Park curator makes pitch for drop-in turf

Eden Park curator Mark Perham can see the day when all New Zealand's major cricket grounds feature drop-in, rather than conventional pitches.

The man in charge of the surface for Boxing Day's opening one-day international between New Zealand and Sri Lanka believes it will only be a matter of time until the drop-in operations at Auckland and Christchurch are replicated around the country.

Criticised during their development stages, the drop-in pitches have gradually improved over the past couple of years, a trend Perham expects to continue at Eden Park on Sunday.

"I really think they're the future for New Zealand cricket," he said yesterday.

"For the larger centres at least, the drop-ins provide the flexibility needed for a multi-purpose sport stadium, and have reached the point where we can predict their behaviour with a degree of certainty.

"Auckland and Christchurch are well under way, and I reckon it won't be long until Wellington and Dunedin start following suit."

Sunday's wicket will be the same one that Perham used for the test against South Africa last summer - a match that featured centuries for Scott Styris, Chris Cairns and Jacques Rudolph, and a historic win for New Zealand.

Made from North Otago's Kakanui clay, the pitch was slowish then but is expected to contain slightly more bounce for the ODI.

"I think it's going to be another good one, and hopefully with a little more bounce.

"We've taken more of the greenness out of the surface for the one-dayer, and that's pretty much the only difference.

"Kakanui clay pitches usually take three or four years to reach their prime but I think we'll see an improvement in this as a two year-old, compared with its first season last year."

Perham said the rain over the past fortnight had made little impact on Eden Park's reinforced-grass outfield.

"Up until the last couple of days we were really happy with where we were at, but we've made up the time lost and we should be fine for Sunday."