Lack of sleep leaves no room for groundsman's nightmares

It's little wonder that New Zealand Cricket's High Performance Centre turf manager Karl Johnson asked today: "What is it about opening matches of World Cups?"

He and his crew had another sleepless night attempting to halt the effects of water on the Bert Sutcliffe Oval as another deluge dumped itself on the Christchurch region. In the 12 hours from 5.30pm yesterday 38 millilitres, or one and a half inches, of rain fell.

Johnson and his workers Mike Robins and Rupert Bool super-sopped all night, working in shifts.

"We just concentrated on the area around the covers because we worried that there was just so much water around that it would run back under the covers.

"The outfield was just water-logged. Within a 20-metre radius of the northern sightscreen there was a massive lake. The whole outfield was a series of lakes.

"At one stage we nearly gave up. The sopper can take 100 litres of water and at one stage we were only driving 10 metres before it filled up again. We just took the water and dumped it outside the ground.

"We probably kept the Sri Lankans awake all night as we had to go past where they are staying," he said.

At one stage they ran out of diesel for the vehicle and had to get that re-stocked while also getting food and something to drink.

It wasn't a new experience for Johnson. He went through the same thing at the 2000 CricInfo Women's World Cup 14 months ago, moving 10,000 litres of water from the ground that night before the first game of that event.

"It was worse than then. The ground this time was already saturated. Back then it had been dry so the ground coped much better by absorbing the rainwater.

"The guys did a fantastic job, in fact they have done a great job all week. It is the third or fourth night we have done it. Everybody is just so drained. My main concern is for our human resources, we still have a long way to go.

"Now that we have this game going we have get onto the other grounds to have them ready for tomorrow," he said.

"I walked onto the third oval, [which is what the as yet un-named new ground at Lincoln is called] last night and the only part that wasn't under water was the slightly raised pitch in the middle," Johnson said.

He had every reason to make the comment: "What is it about opening matches of World Cups?"