County cricket grounds have been asked to lend their water gathering ‘Super Soppers’ to help in the effort against the large storm battering areas of Britain.
Designed to gather up water from rain-soaked outfields, the specialist equipment will be re-deployed to local roads and motorways to help clear standing water from main thoroughfares.
“It’s the obvious solution” said James Sandbag, Chief Reaction Officer at the Environment Agency. “We’ve appealed to a number of groundsmen from the country’s county and test facilities to let us make use of these excellent flood-battling vehicles” he explained.
With many years of expertise in clearing and dispersing water from cricket grounds, the decision to turn to cricket groundsmen is being considered a smart move by experts in dealing with the problems of flooding across Britain.

“It makes a great deal of sense” said Flood Avoidance Director Simon Dredger “I’m not sure why we didn’t think of it before”.
Details released by the Environmental Agency show 12 machines have been recruited so far and are expected to be in active service in the coming days.
Working in conjunction with six groundsman assistants, it is understood each Sopper will soak up water from the surface of the highways and pump it, via a series of pipes, into a collection of large buckets wheeled alongside the vehicle.
At this stage only Glamorgan have chosen not to lend their equipment, explaining that with almost continuous rain in the country over the year, their Sopper is in constant use 365 days of the year.