Improvement of Local Soils in Order to Make "Fast & Bouncy" Cricket Pitches

The playing character of pitches varies considerably from country to country and generally, pitches in the Indian subcontinent are regarded to be 'slow, low & dusty' in contrast to Australian or South African pitches which are 'fast & bouncy'. Sri Lankan players find it particularly hard to adapt to fast and bouncy pitches because they seldom find comparable playing conditions at home. This project tried to address this problem by investigating the possibility of improving the soils used in local cricket pitches in order to make them produce 'fast & bouncy' pitches. Data was gathered from local pitches by collecting and analyzing soil samples from Test venues in the vicinity of Colombo. This data was then compared to available data from other countries, especially Australia (due to similar climatic conditions). It was found that local pitches had high silt content, low clay content and low plasticity due to a difference in clay mineralogy when compared to Australian pitches. It was hypothesized that by reducing the silt content and improving the plasticity by the introduction of Bentonite (a clay type with very high plasticity) in to the soil would produce a faster and bouncier pitch of similar character to those in Australia. Small scale model pitches were built and then tested to find the effect the additional Bentonite on the pitch characteristics.