Photo Credit: Cricket NSW
Cricket NSW has appointed award-winning Green Options Landscape Management as its turf contractor for the sport’s $60 million state-of-the-art cricket centre on the Wilson Park site.
Green Options, which boasts over 30-years’ experience, has forged a tremendous reputation through working in a variety of areas including stadium, sports and events, as well as government, commercial, education, and residential.
The company’s impressive sport portfolio includes cricket grounds like the WACA, Optus Stadium wickets, Junction Oval, Drummoyne Oval and another 6x 1st Grade Sydney Premier Cricket Grounds, as well as NRL & AFL stadiums, High Performance training facilities for NRL, AFL, ARU & A-League, golf courses, bowling greens & tennis courts just to name a few.
Green Options has prepared and maintained grounds and wickets for international, state, and first-grade cricket competitions and has already commenced work on the new CNSW site’s Oval 1, an International Cricket Council compliant playing field.
Besides the ovals at the Wilson Park site, situated in the Sydney Olympic Park precinct, Green Options will also be responsible for curating:
– A block of 15 wickets for training and matches on the main oval
– A total of 43 turf nets, including eight nets which will consist of Gabba clay and turf and eight with WACA clay and turf that will allow the surfaces to mirror those in other states
Dane Thatcher, General Manager from Green Options, described the responsibility associated with helping to establish the turf playing and training facilities as an exciting challenge.
“This is a state of the art facility that I believe will be soon known around the world, with three different types of wicket soil and grass species from around Australia giving it a unique edge,” Thatcher said.
Cricket NSW Chief of Cricket Performance Greg Mail said Green Options has been entrusted with an important task – the job of establishing world class playing fields and pitches for both elite and community users at the state’s new cricket hub.
“Cricket NSW is constantly striving to become a world class organisation and we know we already have world class athletes, partnering with Green Options is the next phase in delivering a world class playing and training facility,” Mail said.
“The cricket centre will be accessible to the community, our elite players and pathways alike. That is one of the major benefits of the venue that it will be available to a broad range of players.
“For elite players to have the ability to train on pitches that mimic the surfaces they would come across when they play in Brisbane (the GABBA) and Perth (the WACA) is an amazing step forward in our ability to prepare our teams.”
Community users will be able to hire and use many of the facilities at the venue – whether they be from a Premier Cricket club, a junior club, a group of mates wanting a bat and a bowl or a family wanting a café meal.
