Government's refusal to allow the use of foreign soil at the National Sports Centre is behind the appalling state of Bermuda's ‘premier' cricket square.

According to the NSC's head groundsman Trevor Madeiros, international pitch consultant Mike Corley - the English expert brought in to supervise the laying of the new surface on the North Field in the summer of 2000 - refused to “sign off” on the work because of his concerns that local soils would not be able to withstand the pressure of top flight cricket.

The dispute arose after attempts to import clay from overseas with a greater bonding capacity were rejected by the Department of Agriculture because of legitimate environmental concerns over the presence of harmful microbes in non-indigenous soils which are capable of disrupting the local eco-system.

Madeiros himself admits to feeling “tired and disillusioned” after a long, back-breaking summer, fraught with difficulties and said if he had his way, the square would be totally re-laid using sterilised foreign soil.

“It has been a very difficult summer and we have been busting our guts to try and get the wickets right,” he said.

“Obviously I'm still learning about this particular square and there are certainly no shortage of opinions out there as to the best formula for success. “But to be honest the root of the problem is the poor quality of the soil we're working with which does not seem to hold together no matter what we do. And believe me, we've tried a whole lot.”

“But if I was making the decisions,” he continued, “I would dig it up and start again with better soil from abroad. And it is not all that expensive an exercise. Huge amounts of money are going to be spent at the NSC building the central core so what is a couple of hundred thousand more getting the wicket right?

“We are not going to be able to bring one-day internationals here in the future with the wicket the way it is. It's like golf courses - you can have a beautiful club house but if the greens are bad then nobody is going to want to come and play on them.”

However, there are those, Madeiros concedes, who will argue that there is nothing wrong with Bermuda soil and that the fault lies in his preparation and not the raw materials at his disposal.

But in specially designed tests by pitch experts who use a method referred to as the ‘Mottey Test' - where different clays are rolled into a ball, allowed to dry and then have pressure applied to them using a mechanical hammer - it is commonly excepted that soil used in cricket pitches should have the capacity to survive pressure levels of up to 70 lbs per square inch.

When Bermudian soils were subjected to such testing, balls of local clay disintegrated at around 20 lbs per square inch - vindicating those who believe the relaying of the majority of Bermudian pitches with superior material is the only way to meaningfully improve their quality.

In the meantime, however, Madeiros said he would like to experiment by producing more ‘green tops' at the NSC, which he believes might hold the pitch together over the course of a day's play.

“There are only four strips on the entire square and there has been a heck of a lot of traffic on them this summer,” Madeiros said.

“I personally would like to leave a lot more grass on the wicket to try and hold the soil in place for longer. But I am under a lot of pressure from the national coach to shave it right down which I am not sure is the best option with the conditions as they are at the moment.

“I want to try and use a wicket with more grass on it for the Bermuda - West Indies game and I will be interested to see if there is much difference in the way it plays.”