TANYA ALDRED: The Cricketer's Greenest Ground competition, sponsored by Ortus Energy, is open for entries until August 30
My friend has a pet phrase: "Cricket can change the scoreboard."
I love it because it sums up the power of cricket to move things, one run after another, a team working together, each person playing their part – from 20 overs into the wind to sandwich making, sub-collecting, to a vital 55.
My friend's name is Ian Curtis. He played for Oxford University and for Surrey as a slow left-arm bowler before working for Oxford's Environmental Change Institute for 35 years. He's a board member at Dorset Local Nature Partnership, and works to connect the dots between sport and climate – working out how sport could win the planet for nature.
Here's where The Cricketer's Greenest Ground competition, sponsored by Ortus Energy, comes in. Ian and I are members of The Next Test (a cricket and climate group), where we dream of cricket grounds across the country forming a living corridor where nature can thrive. The Greenest Ground celebrates and encourages that.
The good news is that the basic infrastructure already exists. Cricket grounds are, by nature, little green gems. Wherever they are, they are an antidote either to the hard concrete of cities or the industrial agriculture of the countryside.
Most of them are not immaculate – good! The scruffy bits around the edges are vital for nature – be that the bright yellow dandelions sprouting up everywhere at the moment and giving vital early-season nectar to pollinators, or rogue nettles, supporting more than 40 species of insects. A bit of basic, benign neglect is a great starting point. From there, clubs have done amazing things.
Our previous winners are from up and down the country – Manchester (Whalley Range CC), Surrey (Valley End CC), the North East (Corbridge CC), the Warwickshire countryside (Fillongley CC) and East Scotland (Brechin Buccaneers CC), with two runner-ups, in Essex (Eight Ash Green) and Glasgow (Langside Sports Club).
Related: Brechin news – Buccaneers scoop green award
All had something memorable about them, most importantly, the human volunteers who put in hours and hours of work to make amazing change happen. I think about the community orchard at Fillongley and their resident barn owl Joe Hoot, and Corbridge investing in a scythe to cut the grass without using petrol and their chairman John Maude collecting apples from his garden to take to the club for an apple pressing weekend. Fillongley ended up represented in the UK pavilion at the last COP.
The 2025 winner, Brechin Buccaneers, sits in an area of huge social deprivation, and the club does amazing work for local people in terms of energy saving and education, operating a share shop and running community groups, as well as growing their own vegetables for a club shop.
Judges, Russell Seymour from BASIS, naturalist Mark Cocker and author Roger Morgan-Grenville, do a brilliant job choosing from all these great clubs. This year's competition opens on April 24 and closes on August 30, and you can find the entry form via the link at the bottom. Do tell us how you've made your club greener, in terms of saving carbon, planting for nature and helping your community.
If you've entered before and not been successful, please do try again. Not every club can win, but every club is a dot on the map, proof of a growing movement. If you're looking for inspiration, pop into Grace Road. I was there during the first game of the season. It's a lovely old ground, with dozens of trees lining the boundaries. There, in between a visit to the Friends of Grace Road cake stand – a slice decorated with chocolate eggs on Easter Sunday – I met up again with Mark Smith, one of the groundstaff. He was busy bringing cuttings from his garden to plant up and trying to build up the nature walk by the main entrance, despite one of the walls falling down. Robins are busy nesting and even, a scorer has suggested, lesser spotted woodpeckers.
Click here to enter the Ortus Greenest Cricket Ground 2026 competition
A version of this article first appeared in the May 2026 issue of The Cricketer magazine. Subscribe here
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