How to renovate an artificial cricket wicket

We were asked by a local hire company if our Kersten sweeping machines would help reinvigorate a very tired artificial cricket wicket.

One of their customers wanted to hire a machine to clean an artificial surface.

This Surface belongs to a local cricket club and is typical of many practice wickets found across the UK.

Cricket clubs are generally fully equipped with machinery to maintain grass on their sites but few have the machines or knowledge of maintaing artificial surfaces so these practice wickets can quickly become neglected.

Upon first inspection, this was indeed a poor neglected moss bound excuse of a wicket full of moss and compacted mud, definitely well past its sell by date. Many years in the past this artificial wicket was subject pressure washing but this was very messy time consuming and difficult to access water in its location. As a result little has been done.

We only had a couple of hours to make an impression.

Remove loose material from the surface with a sweeper

The first important piece of equipment out of the van was the Kersten De-Moss 90 sweeper attachment on the Kersten K2100 power unit, by passing over the complete wicket twice with the brush at opposing angles, gently moving the moss and mud to one side as we slowly went along. Upon completion of this first process the surface could be inspected showing where a more aggressive approach was required.

Loosen compacted moss and mud from in the carpet pile with a weedbrush

Where the embedded soil and moss could not be removed by the sweeper a weedbrush attachment was used to carefully loosen the solid detritus material from the pile of the carpet. Take care to set the angle and height guide wheel of the weed brush so that it does not reach or damage the attachment of the carpet backing.

Sweep the remaining material from the surface of the carpet

Once all the matted areas were addressed, the Kersten power unit with the sweeper collector attachment quickly collected the debris. The side gulley brush cleans the edges very effectively leaving a defined edge.

The results speak for themselves, a reinvigorated moss free usable cricket wicket that only took a couple of hours with inexperienced operators using Kersten machines for the first time.

Now the surface looks green and slip free so much safer to use. 

You can keep a surface looking this good by regularly maintaining the surface with a Kersten sweeper.

The comments from the Cricket Club after they had seen our efforts:

“As you can see from the pictures it was in need of quite a bit of TLC but with the help of their specialist equipment it has been given a new lease of life”

Take a look at Finmere Cricket Club facebook page here

If you hire Kersten Equipment similar results can be achieved with care in a very short space of time, all done without the use of water or pesticides.

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