Season 3 of DP World ILT20 was a whirlwind of a tournament, with Desert Vipers four balls away from winning the entire thing. After falling short of our own expectations in Season 2, it was exactly the response needed, with players, coaches, and management staff giving it their all throughout a busy five weeks.

I (Ben Hardy-Jones, Sustainability Lead) arrived in Dubai in early January at our team base, JA Resorts. It was fantastic to be back for my second season with a professional cricket team and really special to be back in JA Resorts, which is a superb place to spend the winter. On the pitch we had some fantastic achievements from several key players, including Sam Curran, Mohammad Amir, Alex Hales, Max Holden, and so on. However, we don't often hear about what happens off the pitch, so this blog is going to pick out some of my personal highlights from the season. In addition, it will provide some reflections upon where we can improve going forwards – because sports is all about improvements, and it will finish with a nod to what's next over the coming months in the off-season before Season 4.

Season Highlights

Highlight 1: Sustainability Match

For me, the key highlight of the season was our flagship Sustainability Match held on the 18th of January at Dubai International Stadium versus Abu Dhabi Knight Riders.

Our inaugural Sustainability Match took place last year, and this year was an opportunity to build upon initiatives from last year. This year the focus was on three things:

  1. Reducing emissions from air-conditioning, which we found to be 34% of our entire footprint in Season 2. For this, we undertook some air-conditioning trials.
  2. Further focusing on food by removing dairy from the menu, after last year we took red meat off for the Sustainability Match (which we asked for at all matches this season).
  3. Using recycled materials in sports kits, which was a key focus for this season and which I'll explore in more detail below.

The day was a fantastic success, beginning with activities in the Fan Zone with our Sustainability Impact Partner, Carrefour MAF, where we also undertook a ‘Wake and Shake’ with some of our Schools Programme participants.

After the activities in the Fan Zone, the management team headed up to the Grand Lounge hospitality area, where we networked with sustainability professionals from a range of industries. Some of these guests were attending their first ever cricket game, while some were massive fans, so it was brilliant to be able to share the celebrations around cricket and sustainability and chat to people in a very informal way about the work that we're doing.

Of course, we managed to win on the pitch, which is always fantastic, with Luke Wood the Player of the Match (and so winning the WOODen trophy—a personal favorite moment of mine) taking the Catch of the Season with David Payne. This allowed them to both win a bicycle as part of the League’s sponsorship with The Cycle Hub, and it was fitting that this catch came during the Sustainability Match, with cycling a particularly sustainable mode of transport!

Highlight 2: Palmfit Kit

Throughout the season, Desert Vipers did something rather different and unique with their kit, becoming the first top tier cricket team in the world (we believe!) to play a full season using kits made out of fully recycled materials. This was made possible through our partnership with Palmfit, a UAE-based apparel brand who worked with us to create ‘The Viper Line’.

Switching to fully recycled materials reduced the carbon footprint of our kit by 51%. Furthermore, this kit was made locally which reduced the transportation emissions (and so the overall emissions by a further 8%), meaning our total saving by switching to Palmfit was nearly 60%!

Working with a proactive brand like Palmfit allowed us to be creative. One of my key highlights was gifting Wanindu Hasaranga a special jersey with the number 300 on the back after he had taken his 300th T20 wicket the previous match. This was only possible because we used a local partner, where we were able to manufacture the jersey with a very short notice period.

As with all kits, we encountered some challenges, but working with a supportive organization in the same country as us meant we were able to overcome any difficulties. Overall it was a superb season, and clearly performance was positively affected by this new, higher-performance kit, as we managed to go several steps better than last season.

Highlight 3: Sustainability Partners

The final highlight of the season for me was our sustainability partners. We were able to build upon our successes last season with Sustainability Partners, having a total of 10 Sustainability Partners and Suppliers spanning a range of industries and products.

As a sports franchise that doesn't own their own stadium or team hotel, it's really imperative that we work with organizations that have solutions or have sustainability credentials that we can champion because we believe that they are better for people and the planet.

I've already mentioned how we worked with Carrefour at the Sustainability Match; this was a campaign centered on choosing healthy food and drinks at the supermarket. This is crucial, as a recent Lancet Report found that over 50% of the global population will be overweight or obese by 2050, so encouraging individuals to ‘Choose Better’ is key.

Our partnership with Bluewater as our Sustainable Hydration Partner continued this season. This was really fantastic, because retained players got right back into the swing of things in using their reusable water bottles and we had no problems with new players switching to reusable bottles.

As mentioned above, Palmfit allowed us to reduce emissions from kit, and we were pleased to work with JA Resorts to reduce the footprint of our hotel stay and showcase some of the sustainability initiatives implemented there.

Our partnerships with The Plastic Pledge and Bat For A Chance continued, and we're excited to be working with them during the off-season to encourage schools and organizations to reduce their plastic usage and to donate used cricket kits and equipment to those in need.

Finally, we had three Sustainability Suppliers this year: Detrash, Minimalist (Official Sunscreen Partner), and ElphaTap, all of whom supplied useful products to help the team reduce its environmental impact across day-to-day items.

What’s Next?

As always with any sports team and any organization, areas of improvement always need to be identified. We are currently undertaking our carbon footprint data collection for our report, and we will identify where we can improve. Of course, being a franchise team, we have limited control, but we were pleased in how we can spread positive messages and work with partners. We look forward to continuing our work with sustainability and team partners across the coming years, as well as working more closely with our home stadium and team hotel.

Finally, this is the last in this first series of blog posts, with the blog taking a new direction. This exciting next series of blog posts is made possible because of a partnership with Carbon Happy World, our sustainability agency that has been assisting us over the past few years with all things sustainability-related. Carbon Happy World is joining the team as a Sustainability Supplier, and will provide expert insight and analysis to various sports and sustainability topics in the new blog series, and we are excited to publish our first co-authored blog very soon!

Sustainability Spotlight – Detrash

This Sustainability Spotlight features a fantastic company that uses recycled steel and ocean plastic to create unique and luxurious watches. Detrash, which was founded by Guy Blaskey, provided one special watch to Desert Vipers this season, which was the winning prize for the Viper of the Year. The prize went to Nirm Thanabalasingam, who provided fantastic support to our players in the treatment room during the season, as well as always smiling and being supportive and positive. I can think of no one more deserving of this prize and I hope Nirm appreciates this special watch. If you would like to buy your own Detrash watch, please head to https://detrash.com/, where you can buy watches that not only look stylish, but are good for the planet.