Low-cost plan to help cricket clubs be more resilient to climate change
Sports and sporting organisations face growing issues for maintaining good quality pitches and outfields. The 2018 UK Climate Change projections for the Yorkshire area are drier summers, with more convective storms. Therefore, there is an urgent need for environmentally sensitive and affordable water management practices for these organisations.
This project will involve iCASP producing fact sheets to help sports clubs with water and drought management. These will demonstrate how they can install low-cost and easy to maintain rain harvesting systems using reconditioned water butts, guttering, hoses and electric water pumps. They are an effective way to increase resilience of cricket clubs to drought periods, reduce water bills, and protect against changes in discretionary water usage policy by water companies.
By watering the pitch late in the afternoon or evening, clubs can limit loss through evaporation and increase access to excess water for local nature, increasing biodiversity. These practices are being trialled at Baildon Cricket Club, to deal with future challenges under a changing climate with an aim to develop guidance for other clubs to drive long lasting and widespread behavioural change in sports ground resource management.
Learnings from this project can be adapted and applied to other sports, such as golf, tennis, rugby and football clubs, and the next phase of this project will look at their specific needs.
The project has support from Bradford Premier Cricket League and the English Cricket Board’s sustainability team was also positive about the potential to rollout the low-cost rain harvesting systems more widely. There will be further discussions about whether case studies could be developed to help clubs deal with predicted drier summers.
The project is seeking financial support for several low-cost demonstrator projects to develop installation and maintenance notes. This will avoid a one size fits all approach. The aim is to establish national guidelines and increase uptake at cricket clubs.
Project Team
Prof Dave Hodgson – iCASP/University of Leeds