Shouldn’t we be hitting the oil, gas and coal industries out of cricket?
T20 World Cup, sponsored by Saudi Aramco, was held while UN climate talks take place
The timing could hardly have been more unfortunate. Just while the United Nations (UN) climate change conference has been taking place in Egypt, where political leaders and others are ostensibly trying and failing to avert planetary breakdown, the world’s finest cricketers have been competing in a tournament sponsored by an oil and gas company that has arguably done more to change the global climate - for worse - than any other.
The T20 World Cup, held in Australia, concluded on Sunday with a win for England, and one of its sponsors was Saudi Aramco. With its origins in a 1930s joint venture between Standard Oil of California and another US company, it has been owned 100% by the brutal, extremist dictatorship that is Saudi Arabia’s government since 1980 and is calculated to be responsible for more CO2 emissions than any other company worldwide.
According to the Climate Accountability Institute in the US three years ago, Aramco had produced - somewhat astonishingly - almost 4.5% of total global emissions. Indeed, it is so far, far, far ahead of everyone else that it is a kind of fossil fuel industry equivalent of Don Bradman - as peerlessly prolific at polluting as the legendary Australian batsman was at scoring runs.
No surprises, then, that the company’s deal for this year’s World Cup, together with all major International Cricket Council (ICC) events in 2023, including two more World Cups, attracted some controversy when it was announced last month. According to the Australian Associated Press, the ICC wouldn’t sanction players who “boycotted” presentations for the player-of-the-match awards, sponsored by Aramco.
But even if that came as a relief to some, what about everything else that was going on? Watching the competition on Sky, Aramco’s name was impossible to miss: on the stumps, boundary “toblerones”, crowd hoardings, big screens, players’ dug-outs, the outfield behind the bowler’s arm and the sight-screen behind the wicket-keeper, as well as regularly appearing at the bottom of the TV too. There was just no way any player could escape from being seen or caught on camera with Aramco’s name.
I don’t know Australian bowler Pat Cummins but I imagine this might have aggravated him in particular, given his recently well-publicised refusal to continue to appear in adverts for Alinta Energy during an extended year of its sponsorship deal with Cricket Australia. If he baulks at doing promo work for comparatively minnow Alinta, or being associated with its parent firm, how might he have felt drawing attention to giant Aramco while walking back to the start of his run-up?
Advertising at this year’s tournament previously drew attention when England’s Reece Topley injured himself by stepping on a boundary “toblerone” during a warm-up match, leading him to tell the Daily Mail they’re there “purely for money.” No doubt Topley’s mood wouldn’t have improved on recognising his injury constituted yet one more commercial opportunity for Aramco. When the BBC reported his colleague Ben Stokes’s reaction - “everybody wants to get their names on somewhere” - it was accompanied by a photo with an Aramco “toblerone” in the background.
The hideousness of the Saudi firm moving in on cricket like this struck me earlier in the year when England T20 captain Jos Buttler wore the “Aramco Orange Cap” in the Indian Premier League - a supposed honour because he was the competition’s top run-scorer at the time. It felt somewhat tragic that Buttler - a genuine genius of a cricketer, apparently a very nice guy and now a World Cup-winning skipper too - should find himself advertising what appears to be the Filthiest Firm of All Time controlled by one of the most authoritarian regimes in the world.
Aramco’s press release announcing its ICC deal said it was about “supporting” cricket at an “elite level”, but, of course, if that was its main interest it wouldn’t feel the need to splash its name everywhere. This kind of sponsorship is largely just advertising. In this day and age, when there are calls to ban fossil fuel advertising as well as phase out fossil fuel use altogether, Aramco shouldn’t be “sportswashing” its image through cricket, like it’s also doing with Formula One and golf. The ICC should cut all ties and let modern legends like Cummins, Buttler, Stokes et al play their cricket without feeling that at the same time they’re marketing Very Big Oil.