Multidisciplinary sports surfaces - Football & Cricket

Today, in this new post-Covid era, with the biggest recession in history for our tourism and leisure industry, we have to reinvent ourselves. Our management and the new constructions must be made with a new point of view, they must be versatile in order to optimise their use throughout the year.

Versatility does not make a surface of less quality but with more business opportunities.

The inclusion of different sporting activities in the same space requires a design and management that takes into account the characteristics of the sports to be included, having a good understanding of the game. In this way, we can easily combine football y rugbywhile the merger of Futbol and cricket important aspects to be taken into account, both with respect to the gameplay as well as agronomic characteristics. Making these changes at the design stage is simple, while wanting the versatility a posteriori is much more complicated.

In the cricket, The humidity of both the outfield and of course the wickets must be controlled to the maximum, including the use of covers to avoid humidity or rain, the cricketers want a rather dry outfield, while the players will constantly ask us to water the field to get faster pitches, also the wickets cannot receive water from their environment when a tournament is being prepared, therefore in the design of irrigation Wickets should be bordered in the irrigation system and irrigation should be adequately sectorised.

Thinking carefully about the purpose of the new construction will avoid problems in the future.

The orientation and dimensioning of the football pitches in an appropriate way will allow us to have at the same time facilities of football but we will have to take into account the number of wickets needed to make the game sustainable, and a good design would allow us to combine this wicket area with goalkeeper training areas.

The necessary instrumentation must be versatile, with only the ranges of the parameters sought. The infiltration rate The recommended hardness for wickets will be a few units, while for football it will look for values over a hundred. The recommended hardness values for football of between 70 and 90 gravities will change for cricket wickets to values of around 300 gravities, by means of the compaction through gratings and with the gradual decline of the humidity. Another very important feature to be taken into account is the content of organic matterMore importantly, its control in Cricket Wickets, and given the high clay % and its hardness that the scarifying units feature tungsten tips against wear.

Lower mowing height and humidity will be required for the Cricket Outfield compared to the football pitch.

We must not forget the "net" areas, the Nets, which are so important in Cricket training, their monitoring and measurement of parameters will be of vital importance for their conservation. Not only that they are in adequate value but also that they are homogeneous throughout the field. These evaluations or quality controls are absolutely necessary for optimal management.

It is also possible to combine other sports such as Croquet and Bowling, simply by taking into account the specific aspects of each.

If you would like advice on how to design and build a multi-sports field, please contact Tiloom by writing to info@tiloom.com