TO MAKE PERFECT WICKETS

Evening Star, Issue 21819, 7 September 1934, Page 4

TO MAKE PERFECT WICKETS

HOW “ THE DRYAD ” DOES IT Mr AA r . B. Thompson was a successful London business man. The weather did not concern him. His business in life was exporting boxes. His hobby cricket. He captained a Hertford team. Last year he went to Australia on a business trip. Now he is back, and the weather is the most important thing in his life. Here is why : . In Australia a friend told him that Luttrel, the groundsman of tho Melbourne Cricket Club, was inventing a roller for drying the pitch after rain and so eliminating the delays while waiting for the sun to make the wicket plavabTe. . As a cricketer Mr Thompson was interested. In May this year his friend in Australia wrote and asked him il be would like to take over the British rights of the invention. 4 A specimen roller arrived. Mr Thompson was busy. For weeks it lay unopened in its crate in his office. One day he took it out and examined it. Its. possibilities immediately impressed him so much that he at once wired his acceptance of it. for England. He named it the Dryad. The roller is covered with sponge rubber, and the water taken from the ground is automatically squeezed, into a five-gallon tank. He looked around for opportunities to demonstrate his wonderful roller—and remembered that Britain was in the midst of the-worst drought in hisife put six travellers on. the road. At once they found themselves up against • water restrictions when they wanted to demonstrate the roller. Mr Thompson solved that. He told them to save the waste water in their houses, and take it out in cans in their E-very morning when he leaves home himself he puts in the back of the car a tank containing the family bath water. ", Whenever hd hears of rain at a place where an important match is taking place he rushes off there. _ One of his men was passing through a suburb, when he saw a group of downcast cricketers gazing at a waterlogged pitch. There had just been a cloudburst. , He introduced himself, and offered to dry the pitch. He was laughed at. He extracted thirty gallons of water from the pitch, and play was in progress in half an hour.