On 21st April this year, a team of cricketers will journey to the Himalayas to take part in the highest cricket game on record. They will play at around 5,100m at Gorak Shep – the last stop on the way up to Everest Base Camp and the stunning Everest viewpoint of Kala Patthar.
It may well be the highest official game on record but unofficially they have been beaten to it! In August 2006, 20 students from Durham University including myself, trekked up to Everest Base Camp and Kala Patthar to raise money for the Durham University Charities Kommittee (DUCK) and to sponsor two Nepali children through school with the charity Future For Nepal. The 12 day trek was made complete with…you guessed it…a cricket bat and ball – for the obligatory, and quintessentially English, high altitude game at Gorak Shep. We even have the photos to prove it!
So good luck to the 22 participants of April’s game. Lets hope as the hit themselves into the record books they listen out for the fading echoes of the DUCK team’s soft whack of tennis ball on plastic (!).