Washed out? Cricket is yet to face up to the challenges of climate change

TANYA ALDRED: Climate change is rapidly altering the environment in which cricket is played and the very fabric of the game itself

Cricket is innately linked to its environment. The conditions – the heat, the moisture in the air, the dampness of the pitch, the romance of the old-fashioned sticky dog, the aridity of the subcontinental battle, Headingley cloud-cover – all come together in an almost mythical mix, changeable hour by hour, to render cricket the complex game it is.

Or perhaps the game it was. For climate change is rapidly altering the environment in which cricket is played and the very fabric of the game itself.

Flooding in the UK has ruined clubs and led to widespread loss of fixtures; water shortages in Cape Town this winter led to the cancellation of the remainder of the Western Province club cricket season; 13 IPL matches were shifted out of Maharashtra in 2016 because of drought; water managers in Melbourne have warned that the city could run short of water in not much over a decade.

Some of cricket’s immediate family, Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and West Indies, are especially susceptible to rising sea levels. Zimbabwe, India, Pakistan, South Africa and parts of Australia are at increasing risk from drought.

On a more emotional level, the game as our grandparents experienced it may soon be gone.

As Russell Seymour, sustainability manager at Lord’s, told Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack: “A match can be changed fundamentally with a simple change in the weather… Now imagine what happens with climate change.

"There will be alterations to soil-moisture levels, and higher temperatures will bring drier air, then drier pitches. This will bring a change to grass germination and growth, which in turn affects the pitch and outfield” and, by the by, the type of player who emerges, the type of cricket that is played.

In February, Game Changer, the Climate Coalition report into how climate change is affecting sport in the UK, named cricket as the “hardest hit” pitch sport.

^{"Some first-class grounds have made great strides towards a more sustainable game"}

More than a quarter of England’s home one-day internationals since 2000 have been truncated because of rain and at Glamorgan, 13,000 hours of cricket have been lost in the same time.

It has been reported that putting mesh high over the Lord’s ground has been looked in to by MCC. Dan Cherry, the head of operations at Cardiff, is quoted in the report: “Our experience is becoming the norm for almost every club and it’s difficult even for first-class counties to be commercially viable with such an impact,” he says.

“It’s been worst in recent years – during the 2017 season five of our seven T20 Blast fixtures were badly affected by rain, with three being totally abandoned…

“Climate change is becoming a huge factor. If we don’t take it seriously, it will fundamentally change the game. It’s simple: the less cricket we play at every level the fewer people will watch it, the less they will come to the ground and pay to enter, the less chance there is for young people to be inspired.”

And yet, both nationally and internationally, governing bodies are reluctant to act. The ICC have failed to promise anything, even something as simple as organising tours in a more sustainable way, and the ECB leadership is currently sitting on its hands.

The ECB promised in their current five-year strategy document Cricket Unleashed to “work to promote environmental sustainability throughout the game,” but despite fantastic work done by some interested employees, especially around flooding and local cricket, and the ECB being a member of BASIS (the British Association for Sustainable Sport), those at the top are yet to show much interest.

^{New Road is notorious for flooding}

Some first-class grounds, Lord’s in particular, the Swalec Stadium, The Oval and Edgbaston, have made great strides towards a more sustainable game, but there is no central guidance for anyone, no collation of data and as yet no earmarked pot of money to act as either carrot or stick.

At the recent BASIS conference, Lord Deben, chair of the Committee on Climate Change, was blunt: “I don’t care if you believe in climate change or not, the world does… one thing is certain and that is that we are moving to a low‑carbon future.”

Sport can connect with people in a way that government cannot. It can lead and inspire. But it also has a responsibility. Alexandra Rickham, the Paralympian sailor and environmentalist, has talked of the bubble that sportspeople live in, and criticised sports bodies for not demanding more of their athletes in the way of sustainable living.

The BBC have invested in carbon literacy for their employees, which they have described as a “game-changer” in terms of changing attitudes.

The ECB and the PCA could do worse than match them, as a simple step in the right direction. There is much to be done in an ever-shrinking window, and as other sports rise to the challenge, cricket risks being left behind.

Interested in cricket and sustainability? Follow @TheNextTest on Twitter – a first step in creating a group aiming to be a resource and a call to arms