The joke is that if you want it to rain during this wetter-than-usual Caribbean summer, just start a cricket match.
Beneath the humor is a seemingly tacit agreement with the assertion in a 2018 climate report that of all the major outdoor sports that rely on pitches or fields, “cricket will be hit hardest by climate change”.
By some measures, cricket is the second most popular sport in the world, after football, with two to three billion fans. And it has been more widely embraced in countries like India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and South Africa and in the West Indies, which are also among the places most vulnerable to intense heat, rain, floods, drought, hurricanes, fires and seas. The increase in the level associated with human-caused greenhouse gas emissions.
Cricket in developed countries such as England and Australia has also been affected as heat waves become hotter, more frequent and more persistent. Warm air can hold more moisture, resulting in larger rainstorms. Twenty of the 21 warmest years on record have occurred since 2000.
This year, the sport has faced the hottest spring on the Indian subcontinent in more than a century of record-keeping and the hottest day ever in Britain. In June, when the West Indies — a combined team from mostly English-speaking countries in the Caribbean — arrived to play three matches in Multan, Pakistan, the temperature reached 111 degrees Fahrenheit, above average even for one of the hottest countries on earth.
“It honestly felt like you were opening an oven,” said Akeal Hosein, 29, of the West Indies, who with his teammates wore ice vests during breaks in the game.
Heat is not the only concern for cricketers. Like the closely related sport of baseball, cricket cannot easily be played in the rain. In July, the West Indies abandoned a match in Dominica and shortened others in Guyana and Trinidad due to rain and waterlogged pitches.
An eight-match series between the West Indies and India concludes on Saturday and Sunday in South Florida as the peak of the hurricane season approaches in the Gulf and Atlantic. In 2017, two Category 5 hurricanes, Irma and Maria, damaged cricket stadiums in five countries in the Caribbean.
Read more about extreme weather
Matches can last up to five days. Even one-day matches can last seven hours or more in blistering conditions. While the rain cleared on July 22 for the 9.30am opener of the West Indies-India series in Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago, the players still had to contend with eight hours of sunshine at Queen’s Park Oval in temperatures that reached the low years in the 90s with 60 percent humidity.
According to a 2019 report on cricket and climate change, a professional batsman playing over one day can generate heat equivalent to running a marathon. While marathon runners help keep the heat away by wearing shorts and singlets, in cricket wearing pads, gloves and a helmet limits the ability to evaporate sweat in hot and humid conditions, often without shade.
“It is very evident that travel plans are being disrupted due to weather conditions, along with the scheduling of matches, due to rain, smoke, pollution, dust and heat,” said Daren Ganga, 43, a commentator and former studying West Indies captain. the impact of climate change on sport in relation to the University of the West Indies.
“Action has to be taken for us to manage this situation,” Ganga said, “because I think we’ve gone past the tipping point in some areas. We still have the opportunity to pull things back in other areas.”
The International Cricket Council, the sport’s governing body, has yet to sign up to a United Nations initiative on sport and climate. Its aim is for global sports organizations to reduce their carbon footprint to net zero emissions by 2050 and to inspire the public to consider this issue urgently. While Australia has implemented warm-up guidelines and more water breaks are generally allowed during matches, there is no global policy on playing in extreme weather. The cricket board did not respond to a request for comment.
A suggestion in the 2019 climate report that players be allowed to wear shorts instead of trousers to keep cool in the sweltering heat may seem like a common idea. But that hasn’t gone down well with the starchy habits of international cricket or apparently with many players, who say their feet will be even more susceptible to burns and bruises from slipping and diving on hard pitches.
“Both of my knees are already gone,” said India’s Yuzvendra Chahal, who is 32.
However, questions are being raised within and outside the sport about cricket’s sustainability amid climate extremes and the grueling scheduling of various formats of the game. England star Ben Stokes on July 19 withdrew from the one-day international format, saying: “We are not a car that you can fill with petrol and let us go.”
Coincidentally, Stokes’ retirement came as Britain recorded its hottest day ever, with temperatures rising above 40 degrees Celsius, or 104 degrees Fahrenheit, for the first time. As climate scientists said such heat could become the new normal, England hosted an all-day cricket match with South Africa in the modestly cooler northeastern city of Durham. Additional water breaks, ice packs and beach-style umbrellas were used to keep players cool. Even with those precautions, England’s Matthew Potts left the match exhausted.
South Africa’s Aiden Markram was photographed with an ice pack on his head and another on his neck, his face visibly distressed, as if he had been in a heavyweight fight. Some fans were reported to have fainted or sought medical attention, while many others scrambled for thin slices of shade.
On June 9, South Africa also endured taxing conditions when they faced India in the heat, humidity and pollution of New Delhi. The heat index was 110 degrees Fahrenheit for an evening game. Part of the stadium was turned into a cooling area for spectators, with curtains, chairs and misting fans attached to plastic tubs of water.
“We are used to it,” said Shikhar Dhawan, 36, one of India’s captains. “I don’t focus on the heat because if I start thinking about it too much, I’ll start feeling it more.”
In India, cricketers are as popular as Bollywood actors. Even in sauna conditions, more than 30,000 spectators watched the match in New Delhi. “It feels good. Who cares about the heat?” said Saksham Mehndiratta, 17, watching his first match with his father since the start of the coronavirus pandemic.
After watching the spectacular strike, his father, Naresh, said: “It calms me down.”
South Africa, however, were taking no chances after a tour to India in 2015 when eight players and two members of the coaching and support staff were hospitalized in the southern city of Chennai from what officials said were the combined effects of poisoning. from food and heat. exhaustion.
“It was chaos,” said Craig Govender, a physiotherapist for the South African team.
For the recent tour to South Africa, Govender brought along inflatable tubs to cool the players’ feet; electrolyte capsules for meals; ice and magnesium slush; and ice towels for shoulders, face and back. South African uniforms were vented behind the knees, along the seams and under the armpits. Players were weighed before and after training sessions. The color of their urine was monitored to guard against dehydration. During the June 9 game, several players jumped into the ice baths to cool off.
In 2017, Sri Lankan players wore masks and had oxygen cylinders in the dressing room to combat heavy pollution during a match in New Delhi. Some players vomited on the pitch.
In 2018, England captain Joe Root was hospitalized with gastrointestinal problems, severe dehydration and heat stress during the famous five-day Ashes Test in Sydney, Australia. At one point, a heat index tracker registered 57.6 degrees Celsius, or 135.7 Fahrenheit.
The incident prompted Tony Irish, then head of the International Cricketers’ Federation, to ask: “What will it take – a player to collapse on the field?” before cricket’s governing body implemented an extreme heat policy.
Also in 2018, India’s players were asked to limit showers to two minutes while playing in Cape Town during a prolonged drought there that caused club and school cricket to be cancelled.
In 2019, the air in Sydney became so smoky during a bushfire crisis that Australian player Steve O’Keefe said he felt like he “needed 80 cigarettes a day”.
Climate change has affected every aspect of cricket, from batting and bowling strategy to groundskeepers’ concerns about seed germination, pests and fungal diseases. Even Lord’s, London’s venerable cricket ground, has sometimes been forced to relax its strange dress code, most recently in mid-July, when patrons were not required to wear jackets in the unprecedented heat.
Athletes are being asked to “compete in environments that are becoming very hostile to human physiology,” wrote Russell Seymour, a sustainability pioneer at Lord’s, in a climate report last year. “Our love and appetite for sport risks turning into brutality.”
To be fair, some actions have been taken to help mitigate climate change. Matches sometimes start later in the day or are rescheduled. Cummins, the Australian captain, has started an initiative to install solar panels on the roofs of cricket clubs there. Lord’s runs entirely on wind electricity. India’s National Green Tribunal, a specialized body that deals with environmental concerns, has ruled that treated sewage should be used to irrigate cricket pitches instead of groundwater, which is in short supply.
The players in Indian Premier League club Royal Challengers Bangalore wear green uniforms for some matches to raise environmental awareness. Team members appeared in a climate video during a devastating heat wave this spring, which included this sobering fact: “This has been the hottest temperature the country has faced in 122 years.”
However, some in the cricketing world counter that climate change cannot be expected to be the most immediate concern in developing countries, where the basics of daily life can be a struggle. And countries like India and Pakistan, where cricket is hugely popular, are among the least responsible for climate change. There is frequent advice that rich, developed countries that emit the largest amount of greenhouse gases should also do their part to reduce those emissions.
“In the US, people are flying in private jets while they are asking us not to use plastic straws,” said Dario Barthley, a spokesman for the West Indies team.
Kitty Bennett contributed to research.
