Pitching in for new season of Workington cricket
WORKINGTON’S flood-hit cricket club has had a new artificial turf laid by Maryport company SIS UK. 
SIS, which is part of a multi-national company with bases in Holland and Ireland and has 40 staff in Maryport, won the contract to lay the turf. It is best known for the sporting fields it has grassed, including those of football teams Real Madrid and Manchester United. The company also won the contract to prepare the fields for the African Cup of Nations football tournament last year.
Sales rep Nicola Heron said people were surprised to find that the company also lays artificial turf for smaller spaces under its subsidiary, Artificial Grass Ltd.
“We do private gardens – even balconies. Some of the artificial turf laid as lawn now is almost as good as the real thing – better really because you don’t have to mow it or care for it,” she said.
She added that the garden turf was the same as that laid at the Ernest Valentine cricket ground, just tailored to gardens. “We sell it in strips and people can lay their own because it is so easy,” she said.
The cricket ground remains a shell of its former self just eight days before the start of the new season, with no changing rooms, kitchen or function rooms in the ground, but hopes to have temporary buildings in place in time to play games from next week.
Malcolm Wood, development manager for the club, said: “We are working hard to get the ground ready but work is going slowly. We are still waiting on our insurance claim but at the minute it is volunteers working to get it back to a club instead of the shell it is now. It’s great that the new turf has been laid.”
Thursday, 15 April 2010: Published by Times & Star
