Head groundsman Damien Hough of Adelaide Oval provided an explanation on Friday, ahead of the upcoming 2024 T20 World Cup, of how the field at Eisenhower Park in New York was made for the India-Pakistan encounter in the mega competition.
Hough remarked in an interview with Channel 7 that the work is quite challenging. He said, “It’s a bit tricky, we basically built six of the 10 trays here in Adelaide. We made them modular. We’re really proud of them. We’ve got a couple out of the back that will probably come out here [on Adelaide Oval] next year.”
He added, “We put them in a shipping container and send them really wherever we want around the world. But they’ve gone over to Florida. And I’ve just come back from a month of work over there putting the trays together, putting the soil in, compacting them and putting the grass on. So we’re in the grow-in phase.”
The Groundsman added, “We’ve got a business, a company over there called LandTek that are helping us with the grow-in phase. Then there’s a couple more strategic trips throughout the next six months to do some work on them and then transport them from Florida all the way up to New York where we’ll put them in and prepare them.”
Though acknowledged that there will be many new things and that he hadn’t attempted this method before. The groundsmen said, “It’s a lot of work that’s gone into it so far. But the real work starts around the start of May. It’ll take two days to transport them up which is quite incredible. Never done that before. So there’s a lot of firsts. And then there’s getting them in the ground.”
The Head Groundsman talks about the India-Pakistan stadium capacity
He concluded by saying that the highly anticipated match between Pakistan and India will also take place there and may perhaps be remarkable.
The New York Head Groundsman said, “Four go into that venue, that pop-up stadium, 34,000-seat stadium. Eight games in 10 days. One of them is Pakistan and India which will be amazing. And then there’s six that go into the warm-up venue with so many teams rotating through and so much training.”
