Cricket Climate Heroes XI
Want to know the cricketers who are speaking out on climate change? We’ve picked out a team of climate heroes that we think could tackle even the hottest tests…
1 Rachael Haynes Haynes was an inspirational figure in Australia’s women’s team during her long career, both as a batter and as a leader. She served as vice-captain and, in 14 games, took the reins when Meg Lanning was unavailable. She is one of the founder members of Cricket for Climate, alongside Pat Cummins. She told Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack: “You hear a lot of players talking about a legacy in terms of the game, I can’t help thinking that climate is more important not just in maintaining an existence but in having a full life.”
2 Rohit Sharma (wk) India’s captain spoke out about air pollution in Mumbai during the men’s World Cup. “I think about our future generations: what will they have? They’ll have nothing if the world continues the way it is right now,” he told Ebony Rainford-Brent in a Sky documentary Cricket’s Climate Crisis. “They won’t have fresh air to breathe, they won’t have ocean to go and watch all the marine life, that’s something you think about every day. I enjoy it so much, I want it to continue.”
3 Daren Ganga Ganga played alongside greats like Brian Lara and Curtly Ambrose, and made three Test centuries, two against Steve Waugh’s mighty Australians. He now studies the impact of climate change on sport at the University of West Indies and criticised the ICC after the air-pollution hit men’s ODI World Cup in India: “Administrators must consider the protection of players in extreme conditions. Facilities must be adapted to suit our changing climate and collectively cricket needs to set itself a zero carbon goal. This is a real situation unfolding and I don’t think it’s sufficiently prioritised globally and from the ICC.” He urged the ICC to join the UN Climate Action Framework: “Sport is a victim of climate change, but it’s also a contributor of climate change. And this has to bring about action.”
4 Joe Cooke - Cooke played for Glamorgan between 2017 and 2022 while also being their sustainability champion. He studied climate change and the environment within his Earth Science degree at university and has volunteered at Friends of the Earth for years, currently campaigning for supermarkets to put doors on their fridges. He was the first UK professional cricketer to start speaking out on the climate crisis, the first to join Ecoathletes, and was on a panel at COP26. He now works as a sustainability consultant.
5 Ian Chappell – the forthright Australian captain with the famous moustache, Chappell’s views have been influenced by his wife who has long worked in climate activism. “I worry like hell about where we are going” he says. “You always like to see a good young cricketer coming along but you worry now what their future is going to be. Cricket cannot be separated from the environment, it is all intertwined.”
6 Maia Bouchier – 25 year old Bouchier has been described by England coach Jon Lewis as a “crackerjack cricketer.” She’s played 32 T20s and 9 ODIs for England, a hard hitting stroke-maker and a bowler with aspirations. After campaigning on climate issues via social media, she joined Ecoathletes in May 2024, hoping that: “The organization will help me speak more powerfully on climate and provide me with opportunities to do so. You know, women’s cricket is relatively new. How great would it be if we became the climate leader among all sports? I want to help make that happen!”
7 Mike Brearley (c)– the man with a ‘degree in people’ spoke out on cricket’s entanglement with fossil fuel sponsorship shortly after the UN General Secretary Antonio Guterres told an audience in New York that fossil-fuel companies were “godfathers of climate chaos” and called for a global fossil fuel advertising ban. Brearley told the Cricket Paper: “Both the ICC's deal with Aramco and the MCC's with JP Morgan are disturbing. There is currently so much ‘rowing back’ from recognising the huge dangers of climate change and the need for us to be proactive on the edge of this abyss. We all have to make some sacrifices in order to do this. The CEO of Aramco recently said ‘We should abandon the fantasy of phasing out oil and gas’; I find this remark chilling. We in cricket should not align ourselves with such views."
8 Imran Khan An outrageously talented allrounder, Pakistan’s captain and then prime minister, Imran Khan launched the Ten Billion Trees Tsunami project in 2018. An ambitious reforestation programme in a country at the forefront of the climate emergency, the project is backed by the United Nations. It has had its critics, and Imran is currently in jail, sentenced under charges he called “politically motivated”, but the project continues - a living example of the scale of what needs to happen, - and planted its 1.5 billionth tree in April 2022.
9 Shane Warne – A perhaps unlikely environmental champion, the late great Warne made headlines worldwide when he spoke out after reading the Hit for Six report as a member of the MCC World Cricket Committee. He said: “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 affect 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.”
10 Mady Villiers, An off-break bowler who has played 17 times for England as well as representing the Oval Invincibles and Sunrisers, she started worrying about the climate while recovering from a stress fracture about the same time The Game Changer report came out. She went vegan and started a degree in environmental science at the Open University but worries about cricket’s footprint. “It is about balance and maybe making sacrifices elsewhere,” she says, “taking ownership for what we do outside of cricket.“
11 Pat Cummins – Australia’s Test and ODI captain, and all-round good guy, Cummins founded Cricket for Climate in 2021. The organisation works to create a more environmentally and financially sustainable future for cricket by installing solar panels on clubs around the country with the goal of cricket becoming a carbon-neutral sport in Australia. This practical action has already reduced carbon emissions and saved money – what’s not to like! He has shrugged off criticism of being a “woke, far left climate catastrophist clown” and continued to speak out on issues from fossil fuel sponsorship to charges of hypocrisy. “It is clear we are not doing enough to reduce carbon pollution, largely from the burning of coal, oil and gas,” he wrote in the Guardian in 2022. “It is the responsibility of all of us to leave this planet in better shape for future generations.”