It is unknown whether Gene Kelly was a fan of cricket – he lived in a residence owned by the Marylebone Cricket Club around Lord’s for some time in 1952 – but if he was, the Hollywood actor would have had his work cut out convincing cricket fans about the glorious feelin’ of singin’ in the rain.
To say cricket and rain don’t mix well is a big understatement. Up until the 1970s, a steady spell of rain meant hours of toil were the minimum requisite to ensure resumption of play. A result in England’s favour against Australia at The Oval in 1968 was famously achieved not just due to the effort of 11 men but the more painstaking effort of the spectators, who used blankets, brooms, and sponges to mop up the ground when rain nearly saved the visitors on the final day.
That fans today need not resort to such measures is thanks to the Super Sopper, a hunk of machinery that vaguely resembles Fred Flintstone’s car but is far more efficient – it can remove water from virtually any surface.
It was the brainchild of Gordon Withnall, an Australian inventor, and its genesis can be traced back to a game of golf in 1974. Gordon, whose inventions mostly involved the poultry industry, was playing a round at the Liverpool Golf Course in Sydney when his ball landed in a puddle. One of his friends said, ‘C’mon Gordon, why don’t you invent a machine that removes these puddles?’
And so he returned to his factory at Sydney the next day and told his then 24-year-old son Len to get a piece of perforated metal and roll it into a cylinder. Within three days, the father-and-son duo completed the first-ever Super Sopper, a little hand-push absorption roller, similar to the modern-day model ‘Sandpiper’.
After securing an Australian patent, Gordon introduced the Super Sopper to a national audience on a TV show called The Inventors, where it was voted the best machine of the night. Word traveled fast, and soon schools, tennis courts and cricket clubs in the country were placing orders.
It also piqued the interest of Ian Johnson, a former Australia cricket captain and the Secretary of the Melbourne Cricket Ground Trust. Johnson, a member of Don Bradman’s Invincibles, was mostly remembered for being at the helm when Australia lost back-to-back Ashes series in the 1950s, but his phone call to Gordon in 1979 was perhaps his most significant contribution to cricket.
He invited Gordon to the MCG and asked him to create something that could dry the entire ground. “My father went down there and saw there was a need for a larger machine,” Len told Wisden India. “When he came back to Sydney, he had ideas on how it was all going to work. It was a two to three month process, we used two rollers and a hydraulic drive system instead of a mechanical drive system.”
And so the first motorized Super Sopper was born and sold to the MCG. Shortly thereafter, football clubs and racecourses across the country wanted a piece of the pie as well. “We couldn’t make the machines fast enough,” recalled Len.
Harry Brind, the then curator of The Oval, also heard about the wonderous machine and decided he had to see it for himself. After a demonstration at the MCG, he was convinced and placed an order to take one back to the dominion of downpour, England.
The machine was affectionately christened the ‘Whale’ by the groundsmen at The Oval because of the way it sucked up the water and spit it out through the pipe, much like a whale coming up for air, and the name eventually stuck. “We started selling them to every cricket-playing nation in the world,” said Len. “Every major cricket stadium had their very own ‘Whale’.”
Len remembers how India started out with three ‘Whales’ in the 1990s. “A gentleman from the BCCI (Board of Control for Cricket in India) rang me up in 2006 and asked me if I had supplied those three, and I said yes. The BCCI then ordered four more machines,” he said. “Afterwards, they ordered 20 more. And they kept ordering. We’ve sold 56 ‘Whales’ to India and they are, by far, our biggest client.”
At the moment, there are seven different types of Super Soppers, each with a different water tank capacity. The ‘Whale’ and ‘Shark’ are the motorised machines, the ‘Sandpiper’ and ‘Minnow’ are the manual machines, and the ‘Baby Penguin’, ‘Penguin’ and ‘Walrus’ are the tow-behind machines. The ‘Whale’ is the largest and retails for Aus$48,000 (Rs 25 lakh approx.) while the ‘Minnow’, retails for Aus$1,100. The machines are built to last 25 years, but one of the first ‘Whales’ sold to Richmond Football Club in 1979 is still in use today.
Over the years, copycat machines have been manufactured in other countries, but Len, the head of the company after his father passed away in 2004, is not too bothered about the competition. “We’re the benchmark against which every other machine is judged,” he explained. “Recent modifications include the redesign of the mechanism for the squeeze roller, the addition of a transmission oil cooler, and hydraulic lifts on the wheels to assist in storage and parking. We’re constantly innovating.”
Simply put, cricket ought to doff its hat to the Withnalls. As Christopher Martin-Jenkins noted in his introduction to Andrew Hignell’s book Rains Stops Play: Cricketing Climates, “nothing is more depressing to cricketers than rain, unless it is making nought, dropping a catch or getting hit for 15 in an over.” There may not be a panacea for the latter three, but at least the Super Sopper has given the game a leg up in its constant battle against weather.
