Wheelbarrows filled with tins of green spray paint could be more useful than the heavy roller for staff at some of South Africa's cricket grounds, what with New Zealand set to tour here in August. August? That's the start of the Absa Premier League and English Premier League seasons, the US Open tennis tournament and the PGA Championship. It's also for cricket, but in the other hemisphere: the last two Ashes Tests will be played in England in August.Cricket and August do not often share a sentence in South Africa, but the Kiwis will play three ODIs and two T20s against the Proteas in August, at Kingsmead, Centurion and Potchefstroom."It's not going to be a lush, green outfield," former Centurion groundsman Hilbert Smit said yesterday. "It'll be hard and yellow."Smit knows of whence he speaks, having prepared his ground for a one-day international played there on August 17 2005."We sprayed the outfield green but that only changed the colour of the grass, not the conditions. The ball got old much more quickly than it does during the summer."It's a huge problem if you're playing cricket Tests at that time of year, because the pitches do not change as the match goes on."But for ODIs it's not an issue - the quality of the surface will be good. But the weather could be freezing and that might affect the players," Smit said.That won't be the case in subtropical Durban."We've started our preparations early," Kingsmead groundsman Wilson Ngobese said yesterday."We've done our scarification already and it's nice and green. There's not a lot of rain at that time of year, so we should be fine preparing the pitches. It's hard to say how much bounce there will be, but it won't be flat."So, the New Zealanders should feel right at home on the Highveld.In Durban, where the outfield won't need to be greenwashed, the heat could be on both sides' batsmen...