The cricket ground New Road, with a capacity of 4,500 people, in England, has been located on the banks of the River Severn since 1896.

Often referred to as one of the most beautiful cricket grounds in the world, the sports venue is home to Worcestershire County Cricket Club (WCCC), one of the 18 first-class county clubs within the domestic cricket structure of England and Wales.

The ground turned to audiovisual integrators Hadleigh Technical Support (HTS) and distributors CUK Group for a new PA system that could provide clear announcements, music, and on-site entertainment.

HTS has a long-standing relationship with Worcestershire Cricket Ground. The ground needed a PA system that covered seating areas, as well as bars, food areas, car parks, practice nets, and entrance areas. It also had to be installed at a high level due to the flooding of the ground, which happens almost every year. They provided a document from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) with performance specifications for cricket grounds, which offered guidance on how to integrate the system in a way that respected the ground, says Mark Bromfield, Sales Director of Systems Solutions at CUK.

After site meetings with the end client and HTS, CUK Group set about selecting the right products to meet not only the ECB requirements but also WCCC's needs. "To produce EASE graphics for each area", Bromfield continues, "we referred to the architectural drawings of the different areas, which ensured we achieved consistent coverage and sound pressure level (SPL). We wanted a solution that looked and sounded great".

One of the ECB's specifications for cricket ground performance was redundancy, and WCCC wanted to have control over each area independently based on event requirements. This led HTS to install a total of 94 speakers in the cricket ground to cover 31 separate zones.

The Passive UniBeam™ technology was a major reason we opted for the UBX Series. It offers products with asymmetric dispersion and tilt and swivel brackets, which was ideal for WCCC. This allowed us to mount the speakers at the back of the seating area to achieve uniform coverage from the seats to the front row, explains Bromfield.

The Passive UniBeam™ technology addresses each transducer with specially designed filter networks, gain attenuation, and additional frequency filtering. This results in asymmetric vertical dispersion with constant directivity, ensuring coverage from front to back with minimal side lobe artifacts. The system at New Road is powered by eight amplifiers and controlled by three additional systems, in this case, Symetrix.

The installed system allows for changing the system to any zone for independent volume control while also activating messages and announcements. Additionally, a redundant network ensures that if any problem occurs, one network will remain operational, and the speakers will continue covering their specific zone.

Bromfield is delighted with the results of the new system:

It has given the ground uniform coverage and dispersion, and the fact that the speakers have an IP66 rating and use 100V cabling made the installation even smoother. The sound quality is incredible. I soon realized that a cricket ground is much larger than I thought, so I ended up walking around it in circles to check that everything was working properly. I am very impressed with what has been achieved. It was easy to set up and has given New Road a new lease on life.