The stupidity of sportspeople looking away when climate protesters try to disrupt games is just staggering, like cricketers are young people. The average professional sports player is young. Do they think they, unlike their 40-82 year-old higher ups, have the opportunity to just opt out of the climate crisis? Does Jonny Bairstow think he's just going to be able to opt out of it and "get on with the game" when he and his colleagues already look close to death when they have to play a routine game in the Australian summer? What are they going to do when it gets hotter? The stupidity is that they are the ones that need to go out in the sun for eight hours a day and play, whether it's 15° or 50°.
The Australian players are already intimately aware of how hard it can be in the heat. They've also personally dealt with wildfires. They aren't stupid. They know exactly where all that is coming from. And I understand that in the moment you might just want to get on with the Test, but not so much as a word after the game? Cricketers have a mic thrust in their face and the cameras and attention of the entire cricketing world trained on them every evening of this Test. As the Just Stop Oil spokesperson said, parts of the cricketing world will become uninhabitable. Yet silence from the players, who people love and would listen to.
When the outdoor temperatures get more extreme, they will either have to pretend to look the other way and act like everything is alright as they swelter and faint in record heat, or their matches will be cancelled. I can promise you the ECB isn't paying for cancelled matches. What are they going to do? It's coming for them one way or the other. It's stupid to pretend that the climate might have nothing to do with cricket. Geoff Boycott is stupid to think this conversation doesn't belong in cricket. Cricket more than any other regular job is inherently tied to the outdoors. What a stupid decision to look away and stay silent. The protesters brought an opportunity to open this discussion with players, and they threw it away.
