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Photo: Creative Commons
A group of British adventurers is scheduled to play an extraordinary Twenty20 cricket match on Mt. Everest - in the Himalayan region in north Nepal - on April 21 (the Queen of England's official birthday).
UPDATE: The results and a a brief reporting of the match can be found on the Daily Express
According to The Times of India:
"The match is the brain child of Briton Richard Kirtley, who visited Gorakh Shep three years ago, thought it looked like the Oval cricket ground and promptly began to dream an impossible dream. "The British have a proud history of being eccentric," Kirtley told the media in Kathmandu. "I am keeping up with the tradition."
The players - including bankers and lawyers and such - are ignoring warnings by sports doctors that it could be fatal to play in the high altitudes due to the lack of oxygen in the air.
I've included a video below to give you a view of Mt. Everest, lest you have dreams of Julie Andrews singing "The Hills are Alive" instead of the incredible terrain these players will climb.
BBC News has an interesting story about the match, including a quote from Richard Kirtley, who said,
"This is one of the biggest physical challenges that any one of us will have undertaken. We are all just ordinary people, taking that extra step to achieving something extra-ordinary."
While cricket on Mt. Everest is hardly a fitness story, as such, it was Kirtley's quote that brought it all together for me. Ordinary people, taking that extra step to achieve something extra-ordinary. It's how records are broken, goals are reached, and dreams are fulfilled.
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