By: Brayden Yin

Cricket is an exhausting game, and the earth is warming up. Questions have arisen about whether the sport should continue.

In the Caribbean, there is a running joke that “If you want it to rain, just start a cricket match.” The joke pretty much aligns with a 2018 climate report that says that out of all the sports that rely on playing on a field or pitch, “cricket will be hardest hit by climate change.” Cricket is the world’s second most popular sport. The sport is loved by about 2 billion to 3 billion fans. It is played most often in India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, and South Africa, as well as in the West Indies. According to a New York Times article, “Is Cricket Sustainable Amid Climate Change?” these same locations also happen to be “among the places most vulnerable to the intense heat, rain, flooding, drought, hurricanes, wildfires and sea level rise linked to human-caused emissions of greenhouse gases.”

Cricket was invented in Britain. It is a sport in which players hit a ball in midair, kind of like baseball, and outfielders have to catch the ball and throw it back to the infielders and the bowler while the batsman runs back and forth, and every time he runs back and forth without being tagged out, his team gains one point.

In developed countries where the game is played, like England and Australia, cricket has also been badly affected by climate change. Heat waves there are getting hotter, longer, and more frequent. Warm air holds more moisture, resulting in heavy rainstorms. Out of the 21 warmest years in recorded history, 20 have occurred after the year 2000. A cricket team from the West Indies came to play in Multan, Pakistan, where the temperature was 111 degrees Fahrenheit. The team had to wear ice vests while on break between play.