Different strokes with a cricketing hero
The Cricket World Cup is not far away- just around 100 days away and though for many ardent cricket fans, the chance of seeing their cricketing heroes in action may well be a dream, for the youngsters of the Cricket Live Foundation, they got very close to it last Monday.
It’s not every day you get to meet a former cricket captain of a well known cricketing nation, especially one hosting next year’s World Cup. For the children of Cricket Live Foundation meeting former New Zealand captain Stephen Fleming, getting tips and autographs from him and having cricket practices with the New Zealand Minister Nathan Guy was a thrilling experience. The event was organised by the Cricket Live Foundation at its facility at the MJF Charitable Foundation, Moratuwa.
The Cricket Live Foundation seeks to provide disadvantaged children opportunities to learn life skills through cricket. The initiative is based on five core values of respecting family and friends, nutrition and healthy living, self discipline, team work and punctuality and time management. The project which was initiated in August 2013 now has over 250 children spread over three Cricket Education Centres.
Lessons to remember: Stephen Fleming and Nathan Guy share some cricket tips with the youngsters. Pix by Ranjith Perera
“Our main aim is using cricket as a vehicle to developing life skills and providing an education for under privileged children in countries like Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh and Nepal,” said Cricket Live Foundation founder Alex Reese. “I came up with the idea two and a half years ago when I was in India, living there since I left school in 2009 and I saw that a lot of children don’t like to go to school and they don’t learn much life skills in an academic background. I also found out that children love cricket so I sort of put these two concepts together and came up with Cricket Live. Our goal is to expand to the east and north of Sri Lanka as well as establishing headquarters down south,” Reese said
Seeing the children wearing the black cap of the New Zealand team took him back to the times when he was the captain, said a smiling Stephen Fleming. “You’ve probably got more talent I imagine with your cricket and you’ve got this wonderful opportunity to play this great game of cricket,” he said encouraging the boys. “Don’t worry about the rain. When you play cricket as a job and it rains it means you don’t have to work,” he jokingly told the little star-struck hopefuls.
He went on to say that what makes Sri Lanka special is that the country won the World Cup. “With the type of infrastructure you had at the time you revolutionized the game. There’s courage in Sri Lankan cricketers. This is a chance for us to help Sri Lanka in its journey to development using our shared passion of cricket. Sri Lanka is almost always in the semifinal games of tournaments so technically we will meet the Sri Lankan team at the semifinal,” he added with a laugh.
Minister Guy and Stephen Fleming were in the island to promote the upcoming ICC Cricket World Cup 2015 which begins on February 14 at Christchurch, New Zealand.