Cricket Pitches: The Science Behind the Art of Pitch-Making

The book develops a practical understanding of the fundamental scientific principles and logic underlying the art of turf pitch preparation, measuring, analysing, and interpreting pitch surface behaviour. It's an attempt to understand how the captains, players, coaches, curators, and groundsmen comprehend and analyse the cricket pitch behaviour (days before and during the matches) and whether the pitch behaviour can be standardised and quantified (through bench marking or forming a data-based management system (DBMS) of a pitch profile, pitch quality standards, a pitch behaviour analysis index (PBAI), or pitch behaviour forecasting (PBF) by examining or analysing its mineralogical, chemical, physical, or morphological compositions, weather variables, and different pitch preparation methods and techniques. Individual chapters in this book deal with clay mineralogy, the bench-marking of cricket pitch soils, pitch soil chemical properties, pitch soil water, pitch turf grass, pitch soil organic matter, integrated rolling management, soil structure, and compressibility. This is an effort to decipher the impact of each and every major and minor component of pitch soil, which controls the pitch behaviour either in large or small magnitudes but acts as a critical factor in defining and shaping the pitch behaviour as a whole. Several real-life examples, pitch interviews, scenarios, and case studies as felt and observed by the curator( first author) during the preparation of various international, national, and board matches or during the construction and renovation of new wickets have been included in each and every relevant chapter so as to analyse, interpret, comprehend, and justify the theoretical science with the existing practises involved in pitch construction, preparation, or judging the complex nature of pitch behaviour. Based on findings through the DBMS, PBAI, and PQS of cricket pitch profiles, various innovative and simple methods of analysing, comprehending, and forecasting pitch behaviour have been devised that will enable one to judge and comprehend the complex pitch behaviour in simple ways.