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Opinion

The cancelled Thunder vs Strikers clash is a wake-up call for all of us

Roar Rookie
22nd December, 2019
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Roar Rookie
22nd December, 2019
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The Big Bash League match between Sydney Thunder and the Adelaide Strikers was called off on Saturday due to bushfire smoke. This isn’t the last time that will happen.

On Friday, as a smoky haze swept over my hometown of Melbourne, the smell of ash on the breeze took me back ten years to the Black Saturday bushfires.

Black Saturday marked one of the worst natural disasters Victoria has ever seen. My memory of it was a junior cricket match.

I woke up and wore my whites, like I did every Saturday in summer, and stepped out of the house to a burning orange sky and charred air.

My father drove me to the cricket field, where he folded his arms with the other dads as they all agreed that the game should have been called off. It was unfair to make children play in these conditions, they concurred, as twenty boys coughed our way through forty overs.

After a clumsy and painful first over, both teams stopped to agree: no one was going to bowl fast, and no one was going to slog high. We simply could not see the red ball against the orange sky.

We walked through the match, playing a half-hearted version of the game with these restrictions, and after many breaks to drink water, wash out our eyes, and hack out our lungs, we completed it. We all dreamed of winning the Ashes – but that day was just about surviving the ashes.

We all left feeling terrible, the taste of smoke painted on our throats.

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This Saturday in Canberra, the officials came to a similar realisation: it was not safe to play cricket under these conditions. It is tempting to view the Sydney-Adelaide cancellation as a one-off incident. However, this kind of event will become more frequent.

Smoke engulfs Manuka Oval

Smoke haze is all around (AAP Image/Lukas Coch)

Former Fire and Rescue NSW Commissioner Greg Mullins puts it simply: “Climate change has created conditions for the worst fires we’ve seen in New South Wales and Queensland.”

As the world gets hotter, he adds, “Fires and fire weather will get worse.”

We should expect more fires, more ash in the sky, and more cancelled fixtures, as each summer goes by. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg – from fires to floods to droughts and storms, the increase of extreme weather activity around the world will put a stop to games, entire tournaments, and the hopes and dreams of millions of people, sporting and otherwise.

The ‘Hit For Six’ report, presented to the ICC this year by the British Association for Sustainable Sport, warns that cricketers face higher risks from climate change than any other athletes.

From shortened games at the Australian U15 championship this year to the destruction of England’s Appleby and Eden Cricket Club in freak storms in 2015, we are already seeing the impacts.

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Droughts are damaging pitches from Asia to Africa, storms threaten the low-lying West Indies, and bushfires put a stop to matches in Australia.

It will be worst at a grassroots level. Australia’s Climate Institute notes that “elite venues are improving resilience but local clubs and facilities, the lifeblood of Australian sport, are struggling”.

The impact of climate change on sport is not limited to cricket. During our worsening fire seasons, no athlete can be expected to perform in severely ashy conditions – but there are so many more things that can and will go wrong.

Imagine an Australian Open where everyone’s shoes melt from day one to the finals. Imagine players of winter codes collapsing from heatstroke. Picture the impact of extreme heat on every sport on earth.

From scientists and governments across the globe to our local fire chiefs, the world is waking up to the fact that we need to take serious action on climate change. Our neighbours in New Zealand have cottoned on, and more than 75 Australian cities from Fremantle to Noosa have declared climate emergencies.

Our Pacific neighbours are desperately aware of the threat that they face from rising sea levels.

"We got naked": Djokovic makes the most of the heat break

“We got naked”: Djokovic makes the most of the heat break

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I do not want to minimise the lethal implications of climate change. The loss of a sporting fixture is nothing compared to the loss of a life, a home, a community, and I do not suggest that a cancelled cricket match has any importance next to the horrific tragedies caused by these fires. But, as sport so often can, this cancelled match draws attention to the urgency of a problem. Sport is first and foremost about community.

Casting my mind back to the U14 cricket match I played on Black Saturday, our coaches’ advice didn’t involve the usual reminders about focus, tactics, batting, bowling, or fielding. That day, they just told us, “Look after each other.”

The Strikers-Thunder cancellation should serve as a wake-up call. As a sporting community, we need to acknowledge that climate change will destroy the games that we love. On the world stage, Australia has become a laughing stock for our inaction on climate change. A quick glance at how we are covered on the BBC or on New Zealand news reveals the disgrace of our government’s total refusal to acknowledge this threat.

However, we realise, perhaps more than most countries, the deep importance of the games that bring us together as a community. Sport stars are heroes, and their voices can have a tremendous impact on what we talk about as a nation.

Some Australian sports players and administrators have spoken up on climate change – from retired Wallabies’ legend David Pocock protesting deforestation to the Richmond great Alex Rance modifying his training to adapt to the impact of climate change, from Olympic aerial skier Lydia Lassila to Ricky Bell, CEO of AFL Victoria.

But we need more. In particular, players and fans of cricket need to realise that the ash that stopped Saturday’s fixture is not an isolated episode. It is one in a series of many events that have already started to destroy the game that we love – and we need to use this incident (among so many others) to demand action from those who govern us.

Our Prime Minister was widely criticised for a tweet on 20 November 2019: “Going to be a great summer of cricket, and for our firefighters and fire-impacted communities, I’m sure our boys will give them something to cheer for.”

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Look at the cancellation of Strikers vs Thunder as players struggled to breathe ash. That’s what this great summer of cricket looks like.

I take no joy in this image that proves him wrong. I, for one, would like to prove the Prime Minister right.

Let’s use our voices as a cricketing community to call for action on climate change. Let’s show leadership. As Russell Seymour, sustainability manager at Lord’s Cricket Ground, puts it, “Sportspeople are not by nature bystanders and we can and must react to avoid the crises approaching us.”

Let’s be a cricketing community that sees the obvious wake-up call and speaks up for genuine action on climate change. To quote the PM, that will be something to cheer for.

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