Published Jun 25, 2026 | 7:00 AM ⚊ Updated Jun 25, 2026 | 7:00 AM
Portugal players during a match in the FIFA World Cup 2026. (FIFA.com)
Synopsis: Rising temperatures are forcing sport to restructure itself. The BCCI is shifting the IPL calendar. FIFA introduced hydration breaks at the 2026 World Cup. Doctors explain how extreme heat pushes the heart, brain, and muscles towards physiological collapse. Climate change is no longer a backdrop to sport. It is becoming its toughest opponent.
India’s richest sporting tournament is changing its calendar because of the weather. So is the world’s biggest football competition.
BCCI secretary Devajit Saikia confirmed that the Indian Premier League (IPL), starting in 2027, will aim to begin by 10 March and conclude by 15 May. The last season ran from 28 March to 31 May, pushing the tournament deep into conditions Saikia described as “not very conducive either for the players or for the crowds”.
A body as powerful as the BCCI treating temperature as a scheduling variable says something about where sport stands in a warming world.
On the other hand, more than one in three matches of the ongoing FIFA World Cup 2026 is witnessing the risk of being played under dangerously hot and humid conditions.
The heat concern extends well beyond boardrooms. At the 2026 French Open, world number one Jannik Sinner walked onto Court Philippe-Chatrier carrying a 30-match winning streak and three consecutive clay Masters titles. Two sets up and serving for the match at 5-4 against 56th-ranked Juan Manuel Cerundolo, he bent over with cramps, called for the trainer, and left the court for more than nine minutes. He returned but never recovered. Cerundolo won the last three sets 7-5, 6-1, 6-1.
“I struggled, starting to feel very dizzy,” Sinner said afterwards. “Very low on energy. I just kind of hit the wall, and that’s it.”
It was not the first time. Sinner had cramped in similar conditions at the Australian Open earlier that year. The pattern mattered more than any single result.
Climate scientists have long warned about the health consequences of rising temperatures. Sports medicine experts now say athletes may be among the first groups experiencing those effects directly, as heat and humidity place increasing strain on the heart, brain, and muscles. The concern has grown serious enough that sporting bodies have started rethinking not just how sport is played, but when and where.
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The summer of 2026 made the scale of the problem measurable.
In late April, India briefly held a grim global record; nearly all of the world’s top 50 hottest cities sat within its borders. Temperatures breached 45°C to 48°C across northern, central, and western regions.
The 2026 heatwave drew additional force from extreme humidity surges alongside the traditional pre-monsoon peak heat period known locally as Nau Tapa.
Air temperatures of 46°C combined with high humidity pushed conditions towards dangerous wet-bulb temperature thresholds, the point at which the human body loses its ability to cool itself through sweat regardless of fitness level.
Data from the India Meteorological Department (IMD) highlighted an alarming rise in severe warm nights, with average nighttime temperatures climbing significantly across the northern plains. The body requires overnight cooling to repair and recover. When nights stay hot, that recovery window contracts.
At the FIFA World Cup in North America, an analysis by World Weather Attribution and Climate Central found that climate change had increased the probability of crossing the dangerous 28°C wet-bulb globe temperature threshold, which measures the combined effect of temperature, humidity, wind, and direct sunlight, by 10 to 37 percentage points across various matches compared to when the United States last hosted the tournament in 1994.
Opening-week matches in Miami and Monterrey triggered extreme heat warnings, with the heat index surpassing 37.8°C. Multiple fans required hospital treatment for heat exhaustion in Houston and Miami during the opening weeks.
Dr Sreekhar Pentamsetty, consultant interventional cardiologist at Gleneagles AWARE Hospital in Hyderabad, explains what exercise in extreme heat demands of the body.
“Your heart is suddenly doing two jobs at once, feeding blood to your working muscles and pushing huge volumes to the skin to dump heat,” he told South First.
As athletes lose water and salt through sweat, blood volume falls. The heart beats faster to maintain output, but each beat pumps less blood. Doctors call this cardiovascular drift.
“Once fluid and salt levels drop too far, muscles misfire, coordination goes, and the brain basically pulls the emergency brake to stop you from overheating,” Dr Pentamsetty said.
Humidity accelerates the entire process. When moisture in the air is high, sweat cannot evaporate from the skin efficiently. The body keeps producing sweat but gains little cooling benefit.
Dr Deepak Shivarathre, director of orthopaedics and joint replacement surgery at Fortis Hospital in Bengaluru, described what follows. “When the weather is really hot and also humid, the body’s cooling approach works less well. Athletes may end up with dehydration, muscle cramps, heat exhaustion, dizziness, and, in the worst situations, heat stroke,” he told South First. “The human body has a hard limit on how much heat it can tolerate.”
Dr Shivarathre said the neurological consequences of heat stress matter as much as the physical ones, and receive far less attention.
“When dehydration starts to show up, the brain can get less blood flow. That can bring dizziness, spotty concentration, slower reactions, and even that slightly confused feeling,” he explains.
For athletes competing at the elite level, those margins determine outcomes. A batsman judging a fast delivery operates on reaction windows measured in milliseconds. A tennis player placing a serve under match pressure draws on concentration that heat quietly degrades. A footballer tracking opponents in the final minutes relies on spatial awareness that deteriorates before the athlete registers that anything has changed.
Heat accelerates muscle fatigue through a specific mechanism as well. “For muscles, they may fatigue faster because you lose fluids plus electrolytes. That increases the chance of cramps and other small injuries,” Dr Shivarathre said. “After training or competition, recovery tends to drag on longer because the body needs more time to rebuild what was lost.”
Dr Anika Sait, orthopaedic surgeon at Apollo Speciality Hospital in Bengaluru, describes what happens when heat stress reaches its most dangerous stage.
“Usually, blood is always supplied in abundance to internal organs like the heart and brain,” she told South First, “but when the temperature rises drastically, blood tends to be directed more to the skin to try and maintain body temperature. So the rest of the body is forced to slow down and later shut down in this attempt. It can pose a serious health risk to the athlete.”
Dr Sait pointed out the warning signs that athletes, coaches, and parents must recognise.
Excessive sweating, pale skin, dizziness, sudden fatigue, nausea, vomiting, and painful cramps all signal that the body struggles to cope. In extreme situations, sweating stops entirely, which means the body’s own cooling system has collapsed.
“Heat exhaustion can sometimes become heat stroke within minutes,” Dr Sait warned, “and it can be fatal.”
She drew a clear line between symptoms that require immediate rest and those that require emergency medical response. Dizziness and cramps demand action. Chest pain, severe breathlessness, palpitations, or collapse demand emergency intervention.
Fitness, the doctors agreed, improves heat tolerance but does not remove biological limits. “Even top-level athletes are not fully protected,” Dr Shivarathre said, “because the human body has a hard limit on how much heat it can tolerate.”
Dr Shivarathre said the change over the past decade is visible in clinical practice. “We are seeing more athletes reporting dehydration, heat exhaustion, cramps, and reduced performance during periods of extreme heat,” he said. “Rising temperatures and longer heatwaves are contributing to the problem. Athletes today often train in conditions that are hotter than what was common a decade ago.”
Dr Sait raised a factor that receives less attention than it deserves. “Lack of predictability in the temperatures makes things more complicated,” she said, “especially for athletes travelling across temperature zones.” An athlete who trains in a cooler city and competes in a hotter one arrives physiologically unprepared in ways that conditions on the day do not make immediately visible.
The 2026 FIFA World Cup brought this problem into the global spotlight. FIFA introduced mandatory three-minute hydration breaks midway through each half of every match, regardless of venue temperature.
The policy drew immediate criticism from multiple directions. Fans accused broadcasters of using the breaks as commercial opportunities after Fox Sports in the United States cut to full-screen advertisements during a hydration pause and returned to air ten seconds after play had already resumed.
Some managers, including Netherlands captain Virgil van Dijk, argued that blanket breaks made no sense inside climate-controlled, air-conditioned stadiums.
But sports scientists raised a different objection. Experts from Columbia University and the Heat Lab at UCLA argued that three minutes was medically insufficient under extreme conditions. Lowering core body temperature or meaningfully rehydrating an athlete requires five to six minutes at minimum. The three-minute limit, they suggested, represented a compromise shaped by broadcaster interests rather than player safety.
Teams adapted regardless. England drew global attention by using palm-cooling devices during breaks, rapidly cooling the dense network of blood vessels in the palms to lower core body temperature faster than ice vests or cold towels alone. Other teams deployed wearable health sensors and rigorous hydration-tracking protocols, treating climate conditions as a tactical opponent requiring preparation equal to that given to the opposition.
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India presents this problem at a scale that few other countries match, and with far less infrastructure to manage it.
Dr Shivarathre identified the sports carrying the highest exposure: football, marathon running, hockey, cricket, tennis, and athletics. Dr Sait pointed to cricket’s particular burden. “The gear, long time standing, and the number of games and the spectators involved,” she said, compounds the risk in ways other sports do not replicate.
City marathons in Bengaluru and Chennai start at dawn to manage heat, but training for those events happens through the week in conditions that organisers cannot control. Amateur cyclists, weekend footballers, and school-level athletes train without the support structures that professional sport takes for granted.
Both doctors flag youth sport as requiring particular urgency. Younger athletes’ thermoregulatory systems develop less efficiently than adult ones. Deterioration can accelerate before coaches or parents recognise what they are watching.
Dr Sait argued that structural change at the grassroots level cannot wait. “Hydration and cooling breaks should be made mandatory with clean drinking water availability at all sporting locations,” she said. “Environmental monitoring should be made more stringent. Spray mists to bring down temperatures, and adequate shade provisions for viewers. In the end, we should always remember that heat exhaustion can sometimes become heat stroke within minutes, and it can be fatal.”
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The institutional responses now extend across multiple levels of global sport.
The BCCI’s proposed calendar shift stands as the most direct evidence that a major cricket body now treats climate as an operational variable. Rather than asking players to manage heat better, the board intends to move the tournament entirely away from the worst of it.
FIFA mandated hydration breaks throughout a World Cup for the first time. Just four years earlier, it had moved the Qatar tournament to winter to escape desert heat. Now, even traditional summer hosts in North America find the same pressures arrive regardless of geography or season.
World Athletics president Sebastian Coe has indicated that scheduling major championships during cooler periods is under active consideration. The Tokyo Olympics marathon moved 500 miles north to Sapporo specifically to reduce heat exposure.
Dr Shivarathre described the direction. “We may see more competitions being scheduled early in the morning or later in the evening to avoid peak heat,” he said. “Tournament calendars may also be adjusted to avoid the hottest months. Climate change is becoming an important factor in athlete health and performance.”
The Paris Olympics in 2024 saw the International Olympic Committee release detailed consensus guidelines on heat management for athletes. Dr Sait assessed that effort with clinical directness. “Did that fully prevent heat-related illness in athletes? No,” she said. “Hence, we cannot say that the guidelines are sufficient, but definitely they are good and keep evolving as the sports, athletes, and the environment evolve.”
(Edited by Muhammed Fazil.)
