Pune: New tech lets sportspersons return to pitch 30 mins after rain

“In the era of one-day and T20 matches, this technique plays an important role in helping players return to the pitch quickly after a heavy rainshower, and not stop playing, which was a regular occurrence earlier,” said Kiran Barve, a former cricketer.

A pitch is prepared with sub-surface drainage technique.

When it rains, the pitch becomes wet and unusable for sportsmen and women. It takes hours before the pitch dries up, which more often than not proves disastrous for a team or an individual sportsperson. But a new technology introduced in Pune is ensuring that sportspersons can get back on the pitch a mere half an hour after it rains.

The technology overcomes the shortcomings of international-standard cricket pitches. “The new technique of sub-surface drainage system soaks up every drop of water in a very short period of time, to allow the game to continue with a minimum interval of 30 minutes,” said Kiran Barve, a former cricketer and coach. Barve heads GB Associates, which has so far prepared four such cricket grounds, two of which are in Pune and are ready for playing minutes after a heavy shower.

“In the era of one-day and T20 matches, this technique plays an important role in helping players return to the pitch quickly after a heavy rainshower, and not stop playing, which was a regular occurrence earlier,” said Barve.

Preparing such grounds is a task in itself. The drainage system has been installed two-and-a-half-feet below the surface with an effective network of pipes, like a spider web. “These pipes are of made up of HDPE, which neither cracks nor breaks, even when a heavy roller is used for compacting,” said Barve, who picked up the skills in preparing the grounds with sub-surface drainage technology from Pandurang Salgaonkar, the famous curator. “It was Salgaonkar who was instrumental in preparing the Gahunje cricket stadium with the technology. And I picked up the skills while assisting him.”

These pipes are perforated with 10 to 15 mm bore covering 20 per cent area of the pipe from the upper side and are given two-and-a-half-feet slope towards the peripheral drainage outlet so that the accumulated water travels fast towards the peripheral outlet.

“To give proper effect for the drainage, the entire ground is layered for at least 6 inches to 8 inches with white silica to filter the rainwater more effectively and keep the surface of the ground dry. The entire ground is also layered with the same type of geofabric,” said Barve.

This forms the solid base for fast filtration. “By this, even heavy showers can’t stop the game,” he added.

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For the lush green top, the surface is adequately strengthened with coco peat in proper percentage with dynamic feeder principle, basal fertilisation and organic material to give strength and a solid hold to the grass roots, which are to be planted with a 2 to 3 mm layer.

“This grass is planted by the dribbling method, so that it properly grows horizontally rather than vertically. A typical grass categorised as Selection 1 is used by expert curators. The area of wickets itself is prepared with the vision of different curators suiting the climate, type of game and geological conditions,” said Barve.

Jayant Kariya, a former cricketer, said, “Such types of grounds are mandatory, especially for cricket. This is because for four-five months, cricketers have nothing to do but sit idle. During this time, they can’t even hone their skills…”

So far, Barve has helped set up four grounds. “Two are outside Pune. The demand for setting up such grounds will catch up in the future. People are not aware of this now. Those who realise this are coming forward…” he said.

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He has been selected by a company as an executer for an upcoming cricket ground outside Maharashtra, and one in Nepal.

Manoj Dattatrye More

Manoj More has been working with the Indian Express since 1992. For the first 16 years, he worked on the desk, edited stories, made pages, wrote special stories and handled The Indian Express edition. In 31 years of his career, he has regularly written stories on a range of topics, primarily on civic issues like state of roads, choked drains, garbage problems, inadequate transport facilities and the like. He has also written aggressively on local gondaism. He has primarily written civic stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad, Khadki, Maval and some parts of Pune. He has also covered stories from Kolhapur, Satara, Solapur, Sangli, Ahmednagar and Latur. He has had maximum impact stories from Pimpri-Chinchwad industrial city which he has covered extensively for the last three decades. Manoj More has written over 20,000 stories. 10,000 of which are byline stories. Most of the stories pertain to civic issues and political ones. The biggest achievement of his career is getting a nearly two kilometre road done on Pune-Mumbai highway in Khadki in 2006. He wrote stories on the state of roads since 1997. In 10 years, nearly 200 two-wheeler riders had died in accidents due to the pathetic state of the road. The local cantonment board could not get the road redone as it lacked funds. The then PMC commissioner Pravin Pardeshi took the initiative, went out of his way and made the Khadki road by spending Rs 23 crore from JNNURM Funds. In the next 10 years after the road was made by the PMC, less than 10 citizens had died, effectively saving more than 100 lives. Manoj More's campaign against tree cutting on Pune-Mumbai highway in 1999 and Pune-Nashik highway in 2004 saved 2000 trees. During Covid, over 50 doctors were asked to pay Rs 30 lakh each for getting a job with PCMC. The PCMC administration alerted Manoj More who did a story on the subject, asking then corporators how much money they demanded....The story worked as doctors got the job without paying a single paisa. Manoj More has also covered the "Latur drought" situation in 2015 when a "Latur water train" created quite a buzz in Maharashtra. He also covered the Malin tragedy where over 150 villagers had died. Manoj More is on Facebook with 4.9k followers (Manoj More), on twitter manojmore91982 ... Read More

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