It was four years ago during the Covid lockdown that Pat Cummins found himself with some time on his hands and started to join the dots between some of what he had experienced on the cricket field and the climate crisis. The time he lost six kilos in a day, the days he found it hard to breathe.
He thought about it more when he became captain and started to make decisions based on whether he wanted his team to be starting or finishing in the shade. And more when his first son, Albie, was born. He came up with a practical plan: that he would help put solar panels on his local cricket club Penrith, a blue-collar area in the western suburbs of Sydney that becomes very hot in the heart of the summer. He found some companies that would provide solar and paid for the installation himself. And so, alongside some other Australian cricketers, the idea for Cricket for Climate was born.
