Four Years.
One Revolution.
GameChanger Cricket Loam was developed in response to a brief from Andy Mackay, ECB Pitch & Grounds Advisor, seeking a loam capable of replicating the bounce and pace of overseas pitches. The goal was to exceed the performance of GOSTD SUPERNATURAL — Surrey Loams’ benchmark product — whilst remaining practical to grow and maintain.
The result is a trademarked, ECB-endorsed engineered sports loam. In Andy Mackay’s own words: “The positive feedback from players and coaches has been overwhelming.”
The brief set out four key aims:
1. High binding strength
2. Low shrinkage and cracking
3. High plastic limit — this really helps with bounce
4. Acceptable growing medium for C3 grasses
GOSTD SUPERNATURAL was used as the performance benchmark, with the goal of exceeding it.
“When we installed GameChanger for the marquee at Loughborough, my experience was that Surrey Loams SuperNatural pitches were the fastest, bounciest pitches I’d experienced in this country, so to use this, which we were hoping to be better, was exciting.
I’m naturally sceptical but this stuff genuinely blew me away. For a start the grass loved it, any issues with establishment and coverage had gone and the plant formed deep, strong roots. After that, when we got to grips with the prep requirement, the surfaces were phenomenal. The binding strength being so high and the low shrinkage gave us rock hard pitches with incredible resilience. Even in the humid conditions of the marquee, we could easily provide world class surfaces for top level cricket. The longevity was the most surprising. These pitches would go 3 or 4 weeks of near constant use before there was any notable decline in surface integrity which, where we had 8 pitches for 5 months, was vital.
GameChanger aligns performance with an ability to maintain it with relative ease. These pitches provide pace and bounce unlike I have seen in this country and where the soil is exposed it supports reasonable and predictable levels of turn.”
“The GameChanger loam has been a resounding success as the material used to build and maintain the new pitches at ECB Loughborough, now in use for England teams training. We were looking for a soil to give us extra bounce and pace and GameChanger has certainly delivered that. As many grounds people know, it’s relatively rare that cricket people with high expectations make the effort to pour praise onto cricket pitches, so when they do you know that something has gone very well… and in this case the positive feedback from players and coaches has been overwhelming! The programme for use of these new surfaces in the Loughborough marquee was relatively light at the start of October, but when people experienced the quality of surfaces and realised how well it would help them to prepare for the extra pace and bounce in overseas conditions, the schedule became completely rammed. To build completely new pitches and have them play so well at the highest standard of the game within 2 years of construction is astounding. The soil shrinks relatively little, so cracking is controllable; it has been easy to grow grass in and renovate; and it dries relatively quickly so that preparation time of pitches has been shorter. I couldn’t be happier with the results!”