By Charlie Puckett
2 January 2014
A good cause worthy of your support in 2015 is the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Charity (no, I didn’t know they played cricket there either).
The Africans have come up with a 2015 calendar – cricket themed, gorillas and all. If you want to buy something different and at the same time do something useful with what little you have left after the kids have cleaned your wallet out, go onto the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation (RCSF) website and check out what else you can do:
http://www.rcsf.org.uk/
Ordinarily, I reserve the term BOGOF only for answering questions concerning Middlesex County Cricket League business, but I am delighted to announce that these calendars are available to all members of the CCC at a discounted rate of two for £10 (please quote coupon code RCSF2015 at the checkout to claim your 50 per cent discount on all orders of two or more calendars – every penny goes to the charity).
The story of Rwandan cricket is both a heartening and horrifying one in equal measures; you will all be aware that 20 years ago the country was racked by a terrible civil war leading to the genocide of hundreds of thousands of its citizens. Many of the population fled to Uganda and Kenya and, upon returning, brought the game of cricket back with them. Sadly, at the moment the only ground available to them is a pothole-strewn area, the site of a former mass grave where scraps of clothing and bone come to the surface during the rainy season.
The RCSF will build the national cricket ground of Rwanda, and this will encourage tens of thousands of Rwandan boys and girls to take up the game. The charity is lucky to have some excellent patrons, including Prime Minister David Cameron, cricket legend Brian Lara, BBC commentator Jonathan ‘Aggers’ Agnew and actor Jim Carter, chairman of Hampstead Cricket Club and is chaired by Richard Nicoll, of North Middlesex CC. Work on the cricket ground is scheduled to start in 2015.
Your support will be greatly appreciated and will help expand the game of cricket to another, hitherto non-playing, part of the world.
http://www.rcsf.org.uk/