What is Exchangeable Pitch System? Cricket South Africa's new EPS technology explained

What is Exchangeable Pitch System? Cricket South Africa’s new EPS technology explained originally appeared on Cricket News. Add Cricket News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

• Cricket South Africa is introducing exchangeable pitches to reduce wear on its busiest venues.

• Six SA20 venues have signed up, with the Wanderers furthest ahead in the process.

• Each pitch takes 18 months to grow and five to six days to settle.

The exchangeable pitch system, known as EPS, is Cricket South Africa’s answer to a problem that has been building for some time: how to keep its main stadium pitches in pink health when the fixture list keeps growing.

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The board has backed the technology as a medium and long-term solution, and the first signs of it in professional cricket have already appeared.

South Africa is set to host more cricket this season than ever before, with 78 match days scheduled across men’s and women’s internationals, alongside more domestic first-class games than at any point since the system was restructured five years ago.

An expanded provincial T20 tournament of 71 matches and the SA20 add to the load, and the season includes 10 Tests, eight of them men’s and two of them women’s. Every summer may not be quite this full, but the growth in short-format cricket and women’s fixtures suggests that the pressure on the country’s major venues is here to stay.

Heavy workload has led to talk of tracks that are ageing, slowing down or behaving inconsistently, which is a serious concern in a country known for pace and bounce at grounds such as the Wanderers, Centurion and Kingsmead. However, to relay a whole square is not a simple option, as it would take a ground out of use for months, and the board does not have that luxury.

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Australia is the best-known example of drop-in pitches, where surfaces are brought in for the cricket season and removed afterwards so that other sports can use the stadium. South Africa is taking a different route, because its busier stadiums will have surfaces that can be swapped in and out as required, without relaying whole squares or closing grounds for long periods.

Hilbert Smit, the board’s long-time pitch consultant, was keen to stress that difference when he spoke to Cricinfo. He explained why South Africa has not laid new pitches for many years, and why the term “drop-in” does not fit.

“In South Africa, we haven’t really installed new pitches for many years, because we can’t. We can’t just take one of the pitches out for a season because that will reduce capacity, and we just don’t have that luxury,” he said. “So we are introducing an exchangeable pitch system and we don’t want to call it drop-ins because that’s not what it is.”

(Getty)

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Every ground will use its own usual bulli soil and grass to create a surface that suits the venue. Evan Flint, a former groundsman at Newlands and the Wanderers who now works two days a week as a consultant at Kingsmead, explained that the choice of grass varies more than most people think, with a nursery in the KwaZulu-Natal Midlands supplying grounds across the country.

“Everybody thinks it’s all the same, but it’s not. Everybody kind of chooses their variety, and the supplier ships them off all over the country. The grasses are all Cynodons, but then everyone will alternate a little bit as to what they prefer and what grows best in their conditions,” he said. 

The natural character of South African pitches, which normally offer good bounce and carry, should therefore be retained or even improved, with the new surfaces prepared in steel trays on the outfield, independently of the square. Smit said the only real difference lies in how the surface is grown.

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“On the turf side, there is absolutely nothing different to building a new pitch”, he added. “It’s your fertility levels, it’s moisture content, and then just planting the grass and growing it. The difference is that these pitches are being built in a confined area. They are not interacting with what happens next door with the other turf and with Mother Earth, so now you can control it better.”

(Getty)

So far, six venues, all of them SA20 hosts, have agreed to take part, namely the Wanderers, Kingsmead, Newlands, St George’s Park, Boland Park and SuperSport Park. The Wanderers planted their first seeds in 2024 and are the furthest ahead, and they remain the only ground to have hosted a professional match on an exchangeable pitch, with more planned this season.

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None of these pitches will be used for Tests for now. It is understood that only the Wanderers, whose pitch has been on the square for a year, may use theirs for the 2027 ODI World Cup, and talks are also under way about using it in the upcoming SA20.

The other grounds will begin testing in domestic matches this season, except SuperSport Park, which will wait until after the World Cup. Newlands is likely to follow the Wanderers, and Smit said he would not be surprised to see a game there before Christmas, given the condition of the pitch.

Newlands has one unusual feature, in that its exchangeable pitch sits further along the square than at other venues, which may make it less suitable for televised games because of camera positions, although its platforms are large enough to accommodate it.

The full process from planting to a pitch that is ready for the square takes 18 months, and the timeline will be followed strictly to avoid a repeat of the problems at the T20 World Cup in the USA, where the New York pitch was rated unsatisfactory. Once in place, a pitch needs five to six days on the square before it can be played on, and it can then serve the usual five to eight days of high-level cricket before being swapped out, which essentially doubles a ground’s usage.

South Africa has picked the right solution for its own circumstances. If they had copied Australia’s drop-in model, it would not have suited a country whose main grounds are dedicated cricket venues, and a system that rotates pitches during the season fits that reality far better.

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The strongest argument for EPS is control. It is grown on a surface in a confined tray, away from the surrounding turf, which gives curators a level of consistency that an ageing square cannot offer, and it should protect the bounce and carry that make South African cricket distinctive.

There are risks, of course. The 18-month timeline leaves little room for error, and the New York experience shows what can go wrong when preparation falls short. Newlands’ camera position also reminds us that practical details can matter as much as the science. Even so, the cautious rollout is encouraging, with Tests kept out for now and domestic games used as the testing ground. If the Wanderers succeed at the World Cup, the model could well be implemented elsewhere.

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