A touch of water on the brain

In my experience spectators will tolerate a lack of play while it is actually raining. When, as happened during the Centenary Test at Lord's, 20,000 people are sitting sullenly waiting on the ground to dry, then trouble there will be.

''Dicky'' Bird will certainly attest to that, the mauling he took from the members that day, verbal and physical, is something he has been quite unable to forget.

Of course it does not help that the headquarters of cricket slopes some eight feet from Grandstand down to Tavern but because of the heavy demands made on the ground the necessary re-landscaping is very unlikely to happen.

Until recently Lord's was not all that much better than the good club ground as far as covering was concerned.

There were the covers which protected the pitch itself but the trouble normally lay with the used wicket ends on either side of the match wicket.

The best the wit of man could envisage were strips of sheeting which took an eternity to lay and lift and in the process often spilled three quarters of the water which they had collected.

There were, too, the peculiar customs governing the professional cricketer's behaviour towards rain. At top level cricketers are not averse to staying out if rain comes on, sometimes reasonably heavy rain. But it is written into county cricketers' contracts somewhere that they will on no account start if even one drop of rainfall is discernable.

To be fair, there has been a slight variation in modern times.

Dense, impenetrable, cloud which would certainly stop a county game magically becomes playable for a NatWest or a Benson & Hedges. Nothing short of a monsoon stops a NatWest from the quarter finals onward.

We forget that professional cricket can all too easily become a job and whereas club cricketers are out as soon as the rain stops and have indeed been declaring for the previous hour that ''it's clearing up over there'', the professionals move with all deliberate speed.

Resumption also depends on how keen the umpires are to bring up the card schools - Nigel Plews was particularly good in this respect - and also on the state of the game. It is seldom that the skippers are equally keen to resume service.

It is fashionable to criticise the out-grounds - that is those away from County HQ - for their bad facilities.

Certainly I remember a day lost at Wellingborough which would not have been at Northampton. Yet Test grounds haven't been all that much better. Even the famous Edgbaston Brumbrella broke down in time of need, sparking a revolt by spectators who did not think that two balls bowled in the entire day entitled the cricket authorities to hang on to THEIR money.

Now help may be to hand. Lord's has a ''hover cover'' and moreover one designed by a former Test cricketer - Don Kenyon of Worcestershire.

In shape it is like a landing craft, having no wheels. It is towed on and can cover the match pitch and adjoining pitches in just around two minutes.

Once the cover is on the pitch the motors can be switched off and two battery-powered ventilators which are inside, can circulate warm air to keep the pitch damp free. Under conventional covers there was a great risk of pitches ''sweating''.

No doubt this invention has been spurred by the cricket authorities' adoption of the baseball ''rain check'' system, whereby if a certain proportion of the match has not been completed the spectator gets free admission to another game.

Cricket will still have its zany interruptions. Some years ago at Bath a new sports centre was built. In a featureless slab of a yellow wall there was a window.

Every morning when the sun was out the window shone directly into the eyes of the batsman at the Pulteney Street end. If the light was bad there was no play. If the light was good there was no play for at least 20 minutes or so.

Not to worry. The boffins are busy working on it even now. Any day now they'll have managed to re-align the sun.