The Spin | ‘Deep, minging, unpleasant’: cricket’s flooding problem is getting worse
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ECB has been in touch with 27 clubs so far this storm season as the climate crisis bites. What can game do to stay afloat?. The water started flowing into the New Road practice area at about 4pm on Monday afternoon, and just kept on rolling. It flooded the entire ground and half the car park, as well as the nearby racecourse, the rowing club and the public footpath – which is now a popular hang-out space for swans. The head groundsman, Stephen Manfield, a man of a remarkably perky disposition, sits on the balcony of the club’s sports bar watching the fourth flood of the season do its business, the water coming in from the burst banks of the Severn as well as round the back across the fields. For the benefit of Spin readers he pokes his measuring stick into the water – “four-and-a-half feet in the shallow end” – and still rising.
![[Tanya Aldred]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/uploads/2021/06/22/Tanya_Aldred.png?width=75&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Last off-season New Road was flooded eight times (enough for the chief executive, Ashley Giles, to question the long-term viability of the club), and the 2024-25 winter is tracking in a similar way. Most floods last nine to 10 days, though this is the highest since Worcestershire’s end-of-season party in September. Manfield stirs the murky water. “It is deep, it is minging, it is unpleasant, but is my job and I love it.”.
![[Swans swimming on flood water near New Road in Worcester.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/c234021b70e7a5b75b9e3ddb9ea6f8d6aa9e31d3/71_173_3429_2210/master/3429.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
Worcestershire CCC are not alone. Dan Musson, the head of facilities planning at the England and Wales Cricket Board, has been in touch with 27 clubs so far this storm season, and he is expecting to hear from many more this week as a result of the new year floods and the subsequent snow fall and melt. It is still some way short of 2015-16, the worst year to date, when storms Desmond and Eva blew in and more than 60 clubs were significantly affected, but he’s not making any assumptions.
![[Frozen floodwater covering New Road on 8 January.]](https://i.guim.co.uk/img/media/a4aaa9e79a57cf9ec88133f71a371f7f82a1b0fe/0_0_5712_4284/master/5712.jpg?width=445&dpr=1&s=none&crop=none)
