Rain stops play at cost to cricket of £3.5 million
I USED to live within throwing distance of the Sowerby Bridge Cricket Club, deep in the West Yorkshire Pennines. It was a picturesque spot; next to the River Calder, with the excellent Puzzle Hall Inn nearby to retire to after the final over.
Sadly, Sowerby Bridge is one of 57 historic cricket clubs across Britain to have been ravaged by storms and flooding in a single month. A report this week estimated the total damage caused to cricket clubs in December 2015 by Storm Desmond was more than £3.5 million.
Overall, winter 2015 was the second wettest since records began in 1910, with rainfall more than two and a half times heavier than experienced over almost three decades up to 2010.
The 130-year-old Corbridge Cricket Club in Northumberland was forced to demolish its pavilion after it flooded. Fortunately, funds have been raised to build a new one. Both Sowerby Bridge and Appleby Eden in Cumbria are still to return to their own homes.
The England and Wales Cricket Board distributed more than £1 million in emergency funding to floodaffected clubs last year. A further £1.6 million is earmarked for 2017.
Cricket, though, is made of sterner stuff than simply to be bowled over by the increasingly wet and torrid winters that climate change is creating. (This weekend expect more wintry weather: cold with squalls of sleet and snow).
To counter the threat, Marylebone Cricket Club has announced that Lord’s is to be powered by 100 per cent renewable energy. The new Warner Stand is being fitted with solar panels and a ground-source heat pump.
Nothing so fancy, of course, would do in Sowerby Bridge. The joy of a game there was the pleasure of sitting on the grass by the river watching and listening to nothing much whatsoever. Here’s hoping all that has not been permanently hit for six.