Colac West cricketers have labelled the state of Central Reserve’s outfield “disgraceful” and called for action to get the ground in playing condition.
The return of Division One cricket to the controversial venue received disastrous reviews from both West and Central Reserve co-tenant Colac in the fallout of Saturday’s one-dayer.      
Central’s new turf wicket escaped criticism from both captains at the weekend but Colac West skipper Dale Menzies did not miss his shot at the outfield, blasting it as “terrible” and “no good for cricket”.
Colac captain Paul Langdon agreed the outfield was unsuitable for cricket but said both his team and Colac West would have to learn to live with it.
“I don’t think it’s going to get much better, either,” he said. 
“Grass won’t grow on that for the rest of the year,” he said.
“Unless you put a lot of water on it, but it’s almost gone past that stage already where the amount of water you would need probably wouldn’t be worth it.”
A much-needed victory for Colac became almost an afterthought yesterday as large areas of ungrassed dirt – the result of a bungled attempt to top-dress the ground – became the major talking point amongst players.
“I thought the outfield was terrible. Certainly something has to be done about it.”
But both Menzies and Langdon were satisfied with the condition of the new pitch, despite a couple of deliveries hardly bouncing at all. 
“The pitch wasn’t too bad. There was the odd one that shot through pretty low but Colac seemed to handle it okay so you couldn’t say there were too many problems with it,” Menzies said.
“It will get better so for the first pitch of the season, you couldn’t expect too much.”
Colac used the best of the pitch conditions batting second, and a match-winning 75-run partnership from Nick Fisher and Warren McKay, to chase down Colac West’s 8-116 for the loss of three wickets.
Langdon said the win, Colac’s second for the season, could have saved the club’s season, with games against undefeated clubs Warrion and Apollo Bay as well as Irrewarra ahead in the next month. 
“We really needed to get that win,” Langdon said.
“If we had have lost that one, the pressure would have certainly been building on us and you never know where that would have taken us.”
West star Ian Scoble gave his team the perfect opportunity to post a winning total, batting through the innings for a steady 40 not out, but West could not find anyone in the lower order to bat with him. 
“Maybe if we could have found more input from number five down, we might have got closer to that 150 mark,” Menzies said.

DISGRACEFUL: Central Reserve’s outfield came under heavy scrutiny on Saturday during the first Division One game at the venue in two years.