The Hotspot | Why willows put the rest in the shade when cricket goes planting trees

Jul 06, 2026 - 11:30

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The Hotspot | Why willows put the rest in the shade when cricket goes planting trees

In today’s newsletter: a tree that has provided for the game over hundreds of years is now protecting it for the future

In those dog days of late June, when it was too hot to do anything but count down the hours until the sun went down, sport frazzled as well. Horse races were cancelled, a guest village provided shade at the Wimbledon qualifiers, and all around the UK school activities were wiped out, from sports days to the national rounders tournament.

At the third Test at Trent Bridge, where England’s men were playing New Zealand in what turned out to be Ben Stokes’s last hurrah, the England and Wales Cricket Board pressed the button on their extreme heat policy and did what they could to protect players and crowd from temperatures that an open ground in the Midlands was not built to deal with.