Cricket Coconut matting

 Cricket Coconut matting

 Hello Cricket lovers in Germany / Europe,

We all have one passion which is Cricket and a proper ground and pitch are necessary to pursue the passion.

1. Turf: Obviously a Turf pitch would be ideal but not every club would be able to afford that.
2. AstroTurf: An alternative would be having an Astro Turf pitch which costs anywhere between 5000 to 10000 € depending on the amount of work. The more work you do it by yourself ( i.e. your club mates/ friends) the cheaper it gets. 
3. Flix matting: The cheaper alternatives are mattings where a Flix matting costs around 3000€ 
4. Coconut matting: The cheapest option would be the Coconut matting which costs around 900 €. Please contact DCB (info@cricket.de) for more informaiton about pricing. In this blog I will concentrate on how to build a coconut matting.

Coconut Matting: 

Matting is generally soft and its hard to get bounce if we use it alone on a grass field. It is necessary to use wooden planks to get a decent bounce. We need the following things for building the pitch.
Duration to build:  40 minutes to 1 hour

Wooden planks (OSB/3-Verlegeplatte)

There are 2 different options to buy the planks:

1. The planks which are pre cut and readily available in the store. 
• We bought these planks with the following dimensions 2050 mm x 625 mm x 22 mm (length x width x thickness). 
• These planks have grooves (male and female) on their sides and the adjoining plank fits in it. Each plank costs around 8 to 9 € depending on the store. 
• These are available in different thickness starting from 12 mm till 25 mm. Something similar to the attached picture below.
• We bought planks (OSB palleten– layers of large chips, glued together to form a thicker panel) from local DIY store (Baumarkt). Our grass ground is soft so we decided to use 22 mm thick planks. 
2. The DIY stores also carry planks which are bigger in size 2500 mm x 950 mm which are quite expensive (27€ / piece) when compared to other type. These planks need to be cut in the required dimensions accordingly (DIY store will do the job for soem extra money). These are available in different thickness starting from 12 mm till 25 mm.

We chose option 1

• We bought OSB wooden planks (OSB palleten– layers of large chips, glued together to form a thicker panel) from local DIY store (Baumarkt). Our grass ground is soft so we decided to use 22 mm thick planks. We chose them because they are easy to carry and also stable enough for running on them.  I heard from other clubs that they use thinner planks 18 mm thickness. Its your preference and budget. 25 mm planks are also good but expensive. We are now using planks for 18 metres instead of 20 metres and there will be no planks at the bowling end because the matting will be even with the ground for bowlers.

Nails & Washers: 

• We bought 260 mm long nails and I forgot their thickness of nails. Washers were also bought to keeps the nails in place. Please measure the width of eyelid on matting and buy the nails accordingly.

Hammer

Try to buy a hammer with the head diameter around 2 or 3 inches. This will be helpful to avoid miss hits

Matting:

Matting has 4 holes (eyelids) on each end and we use 4 nails with corresponding washers to restrict the movement.

• In the initial days the coconut matting will stretch a lot while playing, so I would recommend to play 2 or 3 practice sessions before the first league match. Make sure you keep one end fixed and strech the matting towards the bowling end.

• Even then the matting will be displaced quite often during the game, the easiest option would be fix the matting at several positions.

• The black dots locate the approximate position at which we fix the matting with nails.

• We have marked those positions with paint to make sure we use the same spot to fasten them every time.

• Please be very careful while fixing the nails at bowling crease and at the centre of the pitch.

• We start fixing from one end, lets say from position 1 (marked below) and pull (stretch) the matting before fixing at next positions. This will help in avoiding some mat movement during play.

• However we try to re-stretch the match during the drinks and lunch breaks or whenever its necessary. The older it gets the less it stretches, in the first season we had to stretch it several times during the match.

Marking: 

We use chalks (strassenkreide) to mark the grease every time alternatively one can also use paint to mark them permanently.

Nails and washers:

We drilled holes on 2 planks (1 for each end ) matching the eyelids (holes on matting) on the matting to fix its two ends from moving. In addition, we drilled holes on some planks in between to restrict them from moving. The nails costed us 5 or 6 € for 5kgs and washers also around 5 €.

Unfortunately neither matting not these planks are water resistant, we cover them with a thick cover (abdeckfolie) after the usage. Covers can be bought from the DIY store (Tedox) for 6€ for a 3 x 4 metres cover. We bought a water resistant paint (imprägnierer) for wood to make them water resistant and improve their life. This needs to be done every year to keep them in a good condition. I am not sure if this is a good option but it was suggested by the DIY store.

We lay the planks first on ground followed by matting on top and we use nails to fix them. Mark the crease with chalks accordingly.

If you need more information feel free to contact me or leave a comment, I will be glad to help you out.

This document is written to help Cricket clubs in Germany, if you think this might help someone please feel free to share the blog.


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