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One of the things we have to do as volunteers with Cricket Without Boundaries is some fundraising. \u00a0There will be more on that soon, but essentially a lot of the money goes directly to benefiting the children and teachers that we meet out in Kenya.<\/p>\n
As many of you will already know, it’s difficult to play cricket with money. \u00a0Sure, a crisp \u00a350 note might make a good bat and you could probably bowl with a \u00a31 coin, but it’s not going to quite hit the sweet spot we’re looking for. \u00a0Instead, what we do is very clever, we exchange this money raised for specialist cricket equipment! \u00a0Ta-da! \u00a0Bear with me…<\/p>\n
Some of the bright sparks amongst you will realise there is another way to do this; get the cricket equipment directly in the first place. \u00a0With this in mind we’ve all set about trying to source some equipment. \u00a0A few of us have got some good stuff, but special attention needs to be drawn to Mac’s wonderful work. \u00a0She got in touch with the International Tennis Foundation who kindly promised us “some tennis balls”.<\/p>\n
The ITF is based in South West London and because I live close by, it was agreed that I would go to pick them up – during the middle of a driving lesson I might add! \u00a0Sure enough, when we arrived there were “some” tennis balls left for us…a massive 1200 of them to be precise!<\/p>\n
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We tried to fit them in to our little Vauxhall Polo but they just wouldn’t fit, it’s hard to imagine just how much space 1200 balls take up. \u00a0That’s not the end of it though, the ITF also provided us with 1200 racquet balls!!! \u00a0These bouncy little blue balls are slightly smaller than a tennis ball and more durable than a tennis ball meaning they’ll be excellent to take out with us…not to mention they were all brand new, still in their packaging!<\/p>\n
So I went back the next day (and another driving lesson) to pick up the second half of the balls, just managing to squeeze them in to the car this time around. \u00a0The next rather significant problem arose pretty quickly, where to store them at my house?! \u00a0Living in a 1-bed place right next to the Oval is fantastic, but spacious it is not, and 2400 balls take up an awful lot of space. \u00a0So over the last few weeks we’ve had a mountain of bin-bags in our back patio and cardboard boxes stacked high in corridors and the living room – I have not<\/strong> been particularly popular with my girlfriend I can tell you!<\/p>\n The next issue is how to get them to Kenya! \u00a0In theory we’ve now got 1 ball to leave with everybody that we meet out there, which is an See what our leader, Mac, managed to get everybody in Africa…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":39,"featured_media":53,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/39"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=48"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":346,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48\/revisions\/346"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/53"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=48"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=48"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=48"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"http:\/\/cwbblogs.com\/kenya2012\/files\/2012\/01\/CIMG2092-225x300.jpg\")
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\nabsolutely amazing concept. \u00a0The trouble is, there are just too many balls for me to carry on the London train system to the airport. \u00a0So 500 racquet balls found their way to Grantham for the recent training weekend to be divided amongst all the volunteers there, and the vast majority of tennis balls have now been picked up by the Ugandan Country Manager Simon Hards. \u00a0This still leaves me with 500 racquet balls and about 200 tennis balls around the house…any suggestions for how to get them to Kenya?!?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"