Cummins shows leadership in a challenging climate

Pat Cummins says his latest initiative stems from his experience of looking up to his sporting heroes in his youth.

Penrith Club president Paul Goldsmith and Pat Cummins shake hands under the new scoreboard that bears the Australian cricket captain’s name Picture: Getty Images

Pat Cummins knows from experience how hot it can get playing cricket in Sydney’s west, but the Australian captain figures that at least the sun’s energy can be turned to some good use and is behind a new group which is installing solar panels at the Penrith Cricket Club.

He and 14 other cricketers have joined a Solar Clubs initiative as part of a newly launched Cricket for Climate organisation Cummins has set up to combat the global warming crisis the planet finds itself in.

Cummins recalled some hot days out at the Penrith which was the hottest place on earth on January 3, 2020 – one of the days the Sydney Test was choking from bushfire smoke and rural towns were subject to the worst fires in our history.

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“This is my home club here at Penrith,” he said on Thursday. “I’ve got lots of great memories here and I’ve been trying to think of ways to give back. Putting solar panels on the club roof is a way of offsetting some of the carbon footprint we have as cricketers flying around the world and it helps the cricket club.”

The club estimates it will save $3000 off its $17,000 annual power bill and plans to feed that money back in to junior development and female cricket programs.

Rachael Haynes, Alyssa Healy, Nathan Lyon, Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Starc, Moises Henriques, Marnus Labuschagne, David Warner, Mitch Marsh and Adam Zampa are part of the initiative which plans to roll out solar panels to 15 clubs in the next six months.

The initiative comes on the day the Australian Cricketers’ Association signed the UN’s Sport for Climate Action framework.

“The last couple of years I have been thinking more about the climate, trying to educate myself and trying to reflect on the impact I have on the planet and I want to do something about it,” Cummins said. “I’ve got a young son and (his partner) Beccy and I have been thinking of ways to protect his future too.

“It culminated in starting this program, it came from an idea of putting solar panels on this building and it’s grown to 14 other cricketers getting on board and forming the Cricket for Climate organisation.

“We’ve got some lofty goals but it is very much in the ideation stage at the moment. We’ve got some great partners involved.”

Players and sponsors will donate the equipment for the installation.

Cummins said he’d had more time to educate himself during the pandemic and reflect on the fact he flies around the world and often plays under enormous lights which run from fossil fuels more often than not.

A contrarian and noisy subset of Australians demand that cricketers stick to sport and that any attempts to improve inclusion or the environment are a turn off.

“We hear it all the time,” he said. “We’ve got this amazing platform, when I was a kid I looked up to athletes as much as anyone for guidance on how to live and how to contribute to the community and I feel that responsibility at the moment.

“Also, cricket is a sport that is going to be as hard hit as any sport, we rely on a pretty stable climate to produce cricket wickets, but we can’t play if it is 50 degrees or if it is flooding or snowing.

“It’s a real tangible window of what we might experience in the future, we feel the effects now. To keep things going for future generations we need to do something now.”