It is time for cricket, one of the world’s most widely played games, to start taking the threat posed by global warming seriously as many of the big cricket-playing nations, including Bangladesh, are on the frontline of climate change.

And pitches in Bangladesh — a country threatened by intense cyclones, rising sea levels and increasing temperatures — are also feeling the pressure.

In 2016, a major match in India had to be moved due to a severe water shortage.

Sri Lanka and the West Indies are vulnerable to rising sea levels.

And intense droughts, interspersed with periods of equally intense rainfall, are disrupting the game in southern Australia, according to a message UNB received from London.

Russell Seymour of the venerable Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC) — one of the oldest cricketing bodies in the world – is the UK’s only cricket sustainability manager, and he is deeply concerned about how the game will cope with changes in climate.

‘A match can be changed fundamentally with a simple change in the weather,’ Climate News Network quoted Seymour as saying.

Climate change is hardly — if ever — on the agenda, yet, of all the major pitch games, cricket will be hardest hit by a warming world. From the ochre-coloured Australian outback to the windswept Scottish coast, cricket is defined almost entirely by the weather conditions. If they change, so does the essence of the game.

In Britain, there is a danger that what are considered to be traditional weather conditions for cricket could disappear within 20 years.

In other words, the assumptions we make about English cricket, its landscapes and rhythms, will no longer apply. The ball may not move in 2025 the way it did in 1985 or 2005.

The old-fashioned English seamer could be on his last legs.

The UK’s weather is likely to become ever more erratic. There are indications that longer, drier summers will be interspersed with more intense downpours.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) won’t release precise data on how much cricket has been lost to rain over the last 10 years. But, according to Dan Musson, the ECB’s national participation manager, it is considerable.

‘There is clear evidence that climate change has had a huge impact on the game in the form of general wet weather and extreme weather events,’ says Musson.

In 2016, more than £1m was doled out to flooded clubs, which are also encouraged to install solar panels, recycle rainwater and look after their equipment. A further £1.6m has been set aside for 2017.

But at an international level, little has been done to mitigate the impact of climate change. The International Cricket Council (ICC) – the game’s governing body – has not commented publicly on climate change or the challenges it presents to the game, nor outlined a grand plan.

The ICC does not set environmental targets for its members and shows little interest in issues such as reducing emissions.