The paddock needs some rain

What with the Kwik cricket and the continuing hot weather 30 degrees again today, the paddock is falling to bits and crumbling. The area where the batsman stands is a dust bowl and is getting more and more hollowed out and looking more like a dip. You can obviously fill it in and water it, but without there being any grass roots to bind it all together it just dries, cracks and disintegrates within a week or so with just a little light use. With heavy use it can go from a sound surface to a dust bowl in a matter of hours and I can see now why concrete wickets and matting are a popular option in places like Australia.

It also kind of reinforces the need for me to develop a batting end at the other end of the wicket this autumn in order that we can leave the currently used end to recover and for the grass to re-establish itself and for a root system to bind the surface together and improve the chances of the wicket surviving heavier use the following year. Realistically we need to have a couple of strips, but there's no way that this could happen in the paddock -or maybe?