The Benefit of the Doubt

Peter Lalor explains that it's not just the weather

If it rains during this year’s SCG Test it will be the eighth time in nine summers wet weather has had an impact on that match.

Stand by for significant bleating from the Melbourne mob. Shane Warne it was that led the call for the Sydney Test to be removed and Gerard Whateley it is who continues that song these days. Some genius on a news desk will instruct anxious reporters to ask why there’s no roof on the stadium. And, as irritating as the moaning may be the sad fact is that Sydney has had more days lost to wet weather than any international venue. Even more than Manchester.

If the science is correct things are only going to get worse. If the loonies are right there’s nothing to worry about, the earth is flat and Gina’s generosity will save us. Hey, maybe she can pay for the roof.

For now let’s, as that eco warrior Rupert Murdoch once said, give the planet the benefit of the doubt.

Of all sports cricket finds itself most exposed to the elements. Cricket is sports canary in the coal mine. Test cricket more than all the other formats combined. Five whole days in the sun, wind, rain, hail, sleet, snow, smoke and/or smog. Of all the existential threats to the conduct of that game, climate change looms larger than T20, the TikTok generation and the like.

And the game, like humanity, has been slow to respond, particularly here in Australia, but at least that has allowed space in the field for initiatives like Pat Cummins’ Cricket for Climate organisation. As Cricket Australia works on its first climate action plan Cummins and co have been working behind the scenes, leading the charge to have solar panels placed on club houses, cutting energy use and power bills, but the skipper and his outfit have grander plans.

A few weekends back I was invited to attend the Cricket for Climate Academy along with representatives from all levels of the game and experts in the climate field.

It was as sobering as it was exciting. The scientific presentations were confronting: If we don’t pull our finger out we are cooked. A child born in 2010 will experience four fold the number of extreme weather events someone born in 1960. Think how many more floods, fires and heat waves await our teenagers. By mid century every capital city in Australia will be experiencing summer days where the temperature hits 50c.

True, it has always been hot and it’s always rained, but never to this extent. Science reports that 20 of the humanity’s hottest years have occurred since the year 2000.

There are 8 million cricket fans in Australia, 2.4 billion globally. The game is a significant contributor to the problem, but the respect it and its participants are held in by the public give it an unrivalled platform to make a difference. Small gestures can have significant consequences. In England they serve beer in recyclable plastic, you pay two quid deposit and can keep the cup with its ground branding on it as a souvenir, return it and get your money back, or drop in a bin so charity can get that money. Simple solution but one yet to be embraced by Australia’s venues.

Individual actions don’t make a big impact, but I liked the message on a poster at The Oval that read: ‘My bottle doesn’t make a difference,’ says 7 billion people.

We are all in this together whether we like it or not.

Warne did not exactly fit your eco warrior stereotype, but even the King could see something was amiss in the kingdom. The leg spinner was a strategic thinker and a member of the MCC’s World Cricket Committee when it received the British Association for Sustainable Sports’ Hit for Six report on the impact climate change on the game.

Spin’s King was an immediate convert.

“At times in the past, it has been hard to know who to believe, but I think we all have to admit now that climate change is a huge issue,” he said after reading the material in 2019. “Scientists with proven facts are telling us things we can’t dispute about the rising temperatures, the rising sea levels.

“Before I’d seen the report I hadn’t really thought about how it would impact the game of cricket. Some of the stuff that we were presented with: how hot it was for some of the players at certain times – up to 50 degrees in the middle – how dangerous it was for them. How the risks affects local club cricket, how clubs have had their changing rooms destroyed by flooding in the UK, how the rising temperatures affect the way grass grows, was scary.”

It is not only rain that has affected the Sydney match. In the summer of 2019-20 there were concerns the Test could not play out because of the dense cloud of smoke that hung over the capital city as the state around it burned. A BBL game had to be abandoned. The Test continued with players reporting it was “hard to breathe” and surgeons confirming that continued exposure to those sorts of pollutants has significant affects on the health of participants.

The first morning of the 2017-18 Ashes was lost to rain and on the Sunday Joe Root was taken to hospital and placed on a drip after temperatures in the middle climbed to 57.6c. Root’s health was further compromised by a stomach bug, but the heat was so extraordinary that day Dean Jones said he thought play should be abandoned before somebody was seriously hurt. Having been hospitalised himself after the celebrated double century in the 1986 Madras Test Deano has some standing in the debate. (Gideon and I visited the Chidambaram stadium and recorded this pre-transition podcast there during the 2023 India Test series as a tribute to the - other - great Victorian.)

All cricket clubs are issued with strict heat policy guidelines these days and an increasing number of games are abandoned because of the temperature. Before anyone starts bleating about the nanny state, consider reports that three and possibly four young Americans died of heat stroke at football training in recent months. In June an amateur cricketer, Mandeep Singh, died of what was believed to be heat stroke as the temperature snuck toward 50c in the UAE. A similar incident is believed to have happened in an Indian game around the same time.

English cricket grounds incurred significant damage during the two intense storms of 2015-16. Grounds and club houses in the Caribbean suffered similar during recent hurricanes (one of which almost took out the T20 World Cup final).

In 2016 13 games IPL were shifted because of drought. I was with the Australians in South Africa in 2018 when prolonged drought had Cape Town on the brink of “day zero” when all the water would run out.

It is not just the weather.

Some 20 games in the recent Cricket World Cup in India were affected by poor air quality, with 19 played when it was “unhealthy” and one when the conditions were rated “very unhealthy”. The match between Bangladesh and Sri Lanka in Delhi saw the players on the field for eight hours at a time when the city had the second worst air quality on the planet. A few years previous Sri Lanka’s Suranga Lakmal and India’s Mohammed Shami had both been so affected by the city’s turgid air that they’d vomited. Gideon and I were among those who became ill with chest infections whilst there for the Border Gavaskar Test there in 2023.

Cricket and cricketers are canaries in the climate change coal mine.

The wine industry talks of terroir, the interplay of soil and climate that influences the outcome of every vintage and cricket operates with similar sensitivities. The outcome of a Test match can literally swing on the presence or absence of cloud cover, the moisture content in the clay or the direction of the wind.

In Inga Simpson’s excellent cricket novel, Willowman, the batmaker Reader reflects on the “many miracles of tree, soil and weather” involved in the growth of the wood he shapes. There are alarming reports from the bat makers of India about the difficulty of obtaining the necessary clefts. Willow needs a cool damp climate and Kashmir is, like everywhere else, warming up.

The very act of engaging with the climate concerns has seen Cummins subject to hostility from the vested interests and those whose existence relies on the “largesse” of those vested interests. The Australian’s rump of culture war warriors readers were rendered puce by any mention of Cummins, who they denounced in a spray of outraged spittle for his education (they are suspicious of people who have degrees) and his climate concerns. They didn’t want to be “lectured to” apparently, not that anyone was lecturing. The angry mob in the comments possibly do not reflect the broader thinking, but they certainly made the most noise. Unfortunately, oped pieces from the coal crazies followed a similar line. Things were further inflamed when an energy company’s sponsorship contract of the side came to a conclusion and he was incorrectly blamed for the end of that deal.

Cummins goes about his business quietly. When immediate past players sharpened sticks over the Justin Langer affair he bided his time before whispering at seasons start that he would stand by his team mates just as they stood by theirs. Surprised initially by the hostility at any mention of the climate, the Australian captain has responded with similar equanimity.

Stories were told over the two days. Ashton Agar recalled how alarmed he and the other players were in the 2017 Chittagong Test when Pat Cummins was seen to be facing the wrong direction as the bowler ran in. He was literally “cooked” and had to leave the field. Agar, sounding like readers in the comments section, said he was “delusional” at the time.

On the first night, Cummins, Agar, David Moody and Alex Carey seemed almost shaken by the science. Later, as we sat around a table, The Australian captain replayed on his phone this graphic presentation of the alarming increase in global temperatures.

Cummins said in one session that there were times now when decisions on whether to bat or bowl are dictated by the heat. In the subcontinent you do not want to send your bowlers out in the hottest part of the day if you can help it. State cricketers said they had all done the same at some point and all conceded that it was not a reason they felt comfortable giving in public for fear of being told to harden up.

They all agreed that you trained for the hot weather and aspired to be the ones who stood up when it was at its worse, but the bravado has its limits. A WBBL batter swore it was heat stroke that got her out in an extended innings. (I am waiting for the day an angry player confronts me to argue that it was heat stroke and not a shit stroke that led to their demise.)

Junior and club cricket now must monitor the temperature gauge when it is hot and like everybody else it must bide its time if it is wet. If it rains on the elite it rains on the juniors and every game in between. The trickle down effect in action.

It wasn’t just senior cricket players at the Cricket for Climate event. Community cricket representatives reported the impact global warming is having on the game. In Rockhampton, as in many parts of Australia, it is too hot to train during the day. Putting in lights is expensive and to some degree counterproductive, but what do you do? Parents, club representatives said, were complaining that with so many days lost to rain or extreme heat they are getting ripped off paying registration fees. Councils will not bide construction of new turf wickets and balk at the expense of lighting. The same problem is being encountered across the country (and I’d love to hear your stories if you have any).

If things keep trending this way cricket could be forced to consider taking refuge in the winter months, but good luck getting on the MCG, Adelaide Oval, the SCG or even your local ground at that time of year.

The game is to some extent already retreating. It could be argued that one of the reasons the IPL is so popular and Test cricket so indifferently attended is that the patrons of the T20 league get to watch it in the cooler part of the day. If you are sceptical please try sitting in the Indian sun for a day at a Test match before getting back to me.

AFLW Giants player Nicola Barr was among representatives of the other sports and was on hand to report that its not all that much cooler in the winter months when that competition starts. Barr’s Giants had taken on North Melbourne in a recent game where the temperature in Western Sydney reached 30c. It was supposed to be winter. Two weeks later it was even hotter.

Cummins admitted he was “surprised by the anger and passion” of those who denied there is such a thing as climate change. Research presented confirmed that the segment of the population most assured of its views on the topic are the deniers. Most know the climate is changing, not all will admit humanity’s role in that change. In North Queensland almost everyone has solar panels, but don’t get them started on that greenie crap.

Between my house and the international airport is a park where former Australian Prime Minister John Howard took his best ever wicket haul and where a well-local private school has done a deal with the council to lay artificial turf on two of the fields. The school has had its struggles in recent times. Fathers have been left in tears at the suggestion women would be allowed to share the storied institution while Sydney’s wet weather has forced training and Saturday games for its beloved sporting teams to be cancelled or shifted.

As Hobart toys with the idea of building a football/cricket stadium with a roof to hold back the tide, as it were, the impact of climate change on the sports we love is becoming hard to ignore.

There are no magic bullets. A 2023 investigation found that the number of artificial fields in NSW had increased fro 24 in 2014 to 181 by 2023 and presumably continues to increase at considerable pace. The cure, alas, could be considered worse than and a contributing fact to the disease according to the report by the NSW chief scientist.

“Future extremes of flooding, heat and fire risk will affect the performance of different types of both synthetic and natural turf full stop, there are concerns about the impact of intense rainfall and flood on the durability of synthetic turf surfaces and increased water runoff and pollution impacts. Increased heat effects are also a concern, as synthetic turf lacks the cooling and latent heat loss of natural turf and high surface temperatures have been recorded from unshaded synthetic turf,” it found.

The reflective nature of the materials used subjects the sports person to increased heat, while rubber infill and turf fibres have been found in the waterways.

The Tempe sports fields nestle on a stretch of the Cooks River near where it was diverted to allow the construction of the airport. The waterway was known as Goolay’yari by the indigenous people. Ian Tyrell’s excellent book, River Dreams, tells of the king prawns and other crustaceans that the locals caught at its mouth before industry destroyed the water way. The Cooks River Prawn became a renowned delicacy for the white settlers who became so proud of them they presented a sample to the Australian Museum in the early part of last century.

The prawns are gone and the river, which has undertaken intensive rehabilitation, is potentially exposed to further environmental degradations by the solution to soggy fields, but hey, we got all weather sports fields as long as it is not too hot or too wet or the bushfires haven’t started again.

I’ve done a quick check and the forecast for the summer is wetter than usual so drought should not be a problem, but be ready for some misery if the Sydney Test should follow the pattern of past summers.