Ashley Giles set to scale Mount Kilimanjaro to play the world's highest ever cricket match
Former England spinner Ashley Giles, perhaps, never reached the heights he would have been hoping for during his international career, but he has now got an opportunity to scale the greatest of heights as he gets ready to play the highest cricket match ever staged, at 19,000 feet, just below the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, the highest mountain in Africa.
Giles, along with other ex-international players like Makhaya Ntini and former England women all-rounder and captain Clare Connor, will be climbing Mt Kilimanjaro in a bid to raise £500,000 for cancer research, endangered African wildlife and build an international standard cricket stadium in war affected Rwanda by taking part in a T20 game.
Vital facts
- The names of the two teams taking part in the noble cause are the Rhinos and the Gorillas, and they will captained by Giles and England women’s cricketer Heather Knight respectively.
- The two teams will set off on their journey next Thursday and will reach Kenya in two days’ time. After they reach the African country on Saturday, they will spend six days climbing Mt Kilimanjaro. On the seventh day, they will have to play the match in the crater in sub-zero temperatures before walking all the way down.
- This match, provided the full quota of overs is played, will beat the previous world record for the highest cricket match, which was played at 16,945 feet by British cricketers on a Mt Everest base camp in 2009.
- Around 25,000 people climb the crater on a yearly basis and only two thirds of those reach the crater. And it can be safely said that none of those have tried the incredulous task of playing a cricket match there ever before.
Giles nervous
The 41-year-old Giles, when asked about the prospect of playing in the highest match ever, jokingly said: "I've gone the distance in my time. But I've never had to walk 20,000 feet to get the ball back."
Giles has played eight games for Nuneaton this season to keep himself in good shape, but that hasn’t stopped him from being extremely anxious.
"I've never done anything like this before - never climbed a mountain," Giles said. "I might have to ask Makhaya Ntini for a piggyback. He'll be the fittest person there by a country mile as he grew up walking everywhere, didn't he?"
David Harper, who is the brainchild of this expedition, said: “As I passed 40 it dawned on me the only way I was ever going to play cricket at the highest level was if I took a game to the top of a mountain.
“Playing at the top of Mt Kilimanjaro will bring a world record to Africa, raise significant sponsorship for three very worthwhile charities, and help raise awareness of the harm that poaching is doing to wildlife across the continent, as well as allowing me to indulge my fantasy of playing against some high quality international cricketers,” he added.
Meanwhile, the three charities benefitting from this match are Tusk, Cancer Research UK and Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation.
"When the genocide happened 20 years ago, a lot of Rwandans fled to cricket-playing countries like Kenya and Uganda, and they brought the game back home," Knight, who is a patron of the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation, said. “Only there was nowhere to play.
"The Foundation has so far raised two-thirds of the money needed," Knight added. "They have bought the land in the capital Kigali, which is very hilly, and have cleared it to make the first cricket ground in Rwanda."