Lord’s head groundsman, Michael Hunt, couldn’t have picked a better time than this year’s recent hot summer to install the home of cricket’s first automatic irrigation system.

Put in as part of the ground’s overhaul, the system has a Toro Gemini pc-based control system that runs the whole watering programme for him.

Before the overhaul, travelling sprinklers were used which made irrigation very time-consuming and invariably meant watering at the wrong time.

With the Toro system, the sprinklers can be programmed to come on at the optimum time, usually overnight. It is also possible to spot-water specific areas, using Gemini’s hand-held radio remote controller.

Toro Irrigation products are distributed in the UK by Lely UK.