Not Out: Cricket, Climate Change & Sustainability

By Tanya Aldred, The Next Test

Cool Down is a network of organisations. Blogs uploaded to the site are by no means a reflection of the opinions of every member organisation

 England’s Ben Stokes suffering from the heat in Durham

 To be a cricket fan in 2024 is to be climate stressed. The World Cup in India? High levels of air pollution, extreme levels of humidity. South Africa? Droughts that in 2018 saw schools closed and club cricket cancelled. West Indies? Hurricanes becoming more frequent, with Hurricane Mara destroying the Windsor Park Cricket Stadium in Dominica. Australia? Bush fire smoke cancelling games, and unbearable extreme heat. Bangladesh and Pakistan? Flooding and more extreme heat. In Pakistan’s Balochistan region, temperatures have hovered around 50°C. And so on, and so on, without cessation. 

Even in the UK, with our comparatively gentle climate, the game is at risk. Extreme weather events are on the rise. In 2015, Storm Desmond brought record amounts of rainfall, causing £3.5 million pounds worth of damage to cricket clubs, especially in Cumbria and parts of Lancashire. During the sweltering summer of 2022, when the 40°C barrier was broken for the first time in this country, the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) introduced shorter sessions in county championship games, as spectators largely stayed away to shelter from the heat. “It sort of reminds me a bit of playing in Dubai” said then Northants captain, Will Young, after a day in the field at the 150th Cheltenham Festival on July 19, the hottest British day ever. Up in Durham, during the one-day international between England and South Africa, Matthew Potts left the field after four overs with heat exhaustion, and spectators huddled behind the stands for relief from the searing sun. This gorgeous ground is not designed for the temperatures we are now starting to experience and which are set to become commonplace.  

At the 2023 Wisden dinner in April, the guest speaker was Oxford professor of Global History Peter Frankopan, author of The Earth Transformed – a history of the world through a climactic microscope. He told the audience of dickie bows and polished court shoes that cricket had to open its eyes, and quickly.

Yogendra Singh via Unsplash

“I tried to gently provoke”, he said. “I spoke around mitigation, around health, about how heatstroke and dehydration presents, about what we should be trying to do as a game.

“The Hit for Six report said that cricket will be the hardest hit of all the major pitch sports by the changing climate and it has become very obvious that some countries that play Test cricket are very exposed. Two hundred and thirty million people around the world live less than one metre above sea level, including nearly 75 per cent of Bangladesh – and sea levels are rising. In the Caribbean, research suggests that hurricanes could be up to five times more likely if climate targets are missed; in Pakistan, almost ten million people were displaced by the terrible floods of 2022. Some Test-playing countries have macro-economic problems that inevitably mean that cricket is played in a context of high levels of poverty and climate distress.”

Just like the tobacco industry as it fought against regulation, fossil fuel companies are getting their fingernails stuck into sports – from football, to golf, cycling to motor racing. Cricket is no exception. The ICC just re-signed a “global partnership” with Aramco, Saudi Arabia’s state-owned oil and gas company, the world’s largest corporate greenhouse gas emitter, estimated to be responsible for over 4% of the entire world’s GHG emissions since 1965. 

Meanwhile Edgbaston has a partnership with the controversial Drax power station and Lord’s is sponsored by JP Morgan, the world’s biggest investor in new fossil-fuel exploration. Back in 2021, the International Energy Agency warned there should be no new investment in oil, gas or coal if the world wanted to keep temperature rises to within 1.5ºC. 

But, there are glimmers of hope. The ECB launched its much waited for Sustainability Strategy at the end of 2023, under the guidance of the impressive Kathy Gibbs. Around the counties, clubs have picked up the baton and run with it – from Edgbaston’s “Go Green” match, to Lord’s starting to de-gas their kitchens, and similar efforts at The Oval, Bristol, and Sophia Gardens.

The ECB’s County Grants Fund, which doles out funding for “Tackling Climate Change”, has seen an increase of 23 percent in applications – clubs can apply for money for things such as double glazing, flood defences, grey water recycling and solar panels. The ECB also runs a Tackling Climate Change award and Cricketer magazine is in the fourth year of its Greenest Ground competition. Last year’s winner was Corbridge, a club that sits on the banks of the Tyne, 19 miles east of Newcastle, and a victim of Storm Desmond. 

Corbridge CC underwater following Storm Desmond

“Exactly what the scientists said was going to happen, is happening,” says Corbridge president John Maude. “We’re having many more violent storms than we used to, and long dry spells nearly every year – this year it was from May 11 to the end of June – which in the northeast is extraordinary.” Clubs like Corbridge, and many others, are also working to improve the biodiversity crisis. The 2023 State of Nature report confirmed that UK wildlife is continuing to decline, with more than one in six of species assessed at risk of extinction. But cricket grounds, with their green space, have huge capacity to do good– from a little bit of benign neglect at the boundary edge to planting insect-friendly plants, or trees, putting up bird boxes and growing vegetables.

Players, also, are increasingly finding their voices. Pat Cummins, alongside other big names in Australian cricket, including Rachael Haynes and Alyssa Healy, launched Climate for Cricket in 2022, which works to install solar panels in cricket clubs, amongst other things, while others spoke up about the difficulty of playing in heavy air pollution during the men’s 50-over World Cup. 

Pat Cummins, Australian Test Captain and founder of Cricket for Climate

In the UK, several of us have set up The Next Test (www.thenexttest.org) – a non-profit organisation championing climate action and promoting sustainability within cricket. We hope to raise awareness, provide useful information, including education sessions for clubs, and be a forum where people can come together with questions and ideas. We held a series of talks in 2022 in conjunction with Gloucestershire CCC and are currently working with them as part of the Bristol Community Climate Action Project. We are still a little acorn but do join us as we start to grow. We would love your help.

A version of this piece first appeared in County Cricket Matters magazine.