New lease of life for Karen Rolton Oval pitches

Apart from its shared location within the belt of parklands that surround Adelaide's city centre, Karen Rolton Oval has until now shared little in common with South Australia's pre-eminent cricket venue on the opposite of the River Torrens.

But players involved in the season-opening Marsh Sheffield Shield match between SA and Tasmania starting Tuesday at KRO will notice two small but significant pieces of Adelaide Oval underfoot that carry the potential to fundamentally change the auxiliary venue's character.

In late August, two prefabricated turf pitches grown at Adelaide Oval under the supervision of head curator Damian Hough were transported the two kilometres to Karen Rolton Oval where they were dropped into the centre of an oft-maligned wicket block.

One of them will see action for the first time at its new home when SA and Tasmania get their respective first-class seasons underway this week, with the other being prepared to host the subsequent Marsh One Day Cup fixture between the same teams on October 8.

SA Cricket Association grounds manager Trent Kelly, the former SA and Western Australia seamer who oversees pitch preparation at KRO, believes it's the first time a first-class venue has hosted both drop-in and "natural" pitches within the same wicket block.

But more importantly, Kelly is confident the new pitches will not only resolve the early-season preparation problems that have plagued KRO in recent years but also deliver a uniformity in performance that ensures players find few differences to conditions that prevail at Adelaide Oval.

"It's very hard in Adelaide during September and October to produce a really good four-day cricket pitch because you don't have grass-growing ability," Kelly told cricket.com.au recently.

"You don't have the turf conditions and the weather conditions – in other words, the heat - to get the couch grass, which is the summer grass, growing. 

"For couch grass to grow, you need soil temperatures to get over 20 degrees (Celsius) so you can get the grass to stimulate and grow sideways, and that in turn allows you to prepare the best surface possible.

"To add to that, we've got winter sport being played here and that significantly impacts the wicket block through the off-season so then you have to renovate it before you can start trying to get a good, even grass cover.

"But what we're looking at now, at the start of the season, is a cricket pitch square that has been renovated on two sides after being impacted by football all winter, and right in middle of that is two beautiful, green grassy drop-ins."

Getting those "beautiful" green strips in situ was not altogether straightforward.

Once the business and logistics case had been approved by SACA and the required permits received from Adelaide City Council and National Heavy Vehicles Register, each of the 25m x 3m concrete troughs weighing 30 tonnes apiece were transported with police escort for five hours through the CBD from Adelaide Oval to KRO.

It was then a further few hours to manoeuvre the specially designed $400,000 pitch transporter into the Oval precinct, and out to the middle where the pristine pitches were lowered into place.

The entire exercise took two days with ground staff at both venues working from first light until beyond dusk before Kelly and his team could rest easy and begin the task of getting the tracks ready for this week's season opener.

As fate would have it, since the drop-ins arrived Adelaide has enjoyed an unusually warm and rain-free September which ensured Kelly was able to turn out "natural" pitches for the SA Scorpions first two matches of their WNCL campaign against ACT last week.

But with KRO scheduled to host five four-day matches – Shield, Toyota Second XI and a pre-Test warm-up match for the West Indies in January, as well as myriad white-ball fixtures – throughout the summer, the drop-in pitches provide greater flexibility and reassurance for Kelly and his team.

"I don't know anywhere in the world where this has been done," Kelly said of the fusion of drop-in and "natural" pitches in a single wicket block.

"The reason for the drop-ins is that we want to produce really good pitches for longer-form cricket, especially early in the season.

"But also, it gives us a great opportunity to collaborate with Adelaide Oval and come up with consistency across both venues, in particular for the Redbacks and their four-day fixtures.

"In the past they'd go to Adelaide Oval and play on a drop-in for a four-dayer or one-day match, then then they come here and play on a different surface, even if it’s not a vastly different surface.

"Now it allows us to have some consistency, and try and help SA to be as good as they can be with their facilities.

"It will also give the Second XI boys a good chance to get on to a drop-in and see if it plays any differently to what they're accustomed to, which should also help their development from a high-performance point of view."

In some respects, Karen Rolton Oval has become a victim of its own success having developed rapidly from an "out ground" and off-season training base to a unique Sheffield Shield venue when it – along with adjoining venues on Park 25 – hosted a hub for all six teams at the start of the COVID-affected summer of 2020-21.

The increased traffic volume – which extended to events such as the short-lived National Premier Cricket T20 play-offs and last year's Australia women's Under-19 championships – meant the wicket block was allowed little time to recover before being 'churned' by football use during wet winters.

That, in turn, meant pitches at KRO habitually offered little to bowlers due to the absence of live grass, most notably at the start of each season with seven of the 12 Shield games played at KRO or Park 25 in the opening months of summers past ending in draws.

But Kelly is hopeful the installation of the Adelaide Oval-grade decks will not only give the constantly evolving venue another high-quality feature, but provide players a chance to showcase their skills as befitting world cricket's foremost domestic competitions.

"It's been a pretty big exercise, but now we're just really looking forward to the first game on a drop-in here at KRO," he said.

"It certainly lifts a burden off our shoulders, as far as getting pitches ready for the start of the summer.

"But we've still got to produce a really good surface and we'll work with Adelaide Oval ground staff, use some of their same techniques and testing methods to ensure we're as consistent as possible with Adelaide Oval."