November 06, 2007	Tuesday	Shawwal 24, 1428

KATHMANDU, Nov 5: A group of 18 professional and amateur British cricketers are trying to set a world record for holding the world’s highest match at the foot of Mount Everest.

“Three teams are planning to play six aside on the mountain, playing five overs each on the Gorak Shap glacier,” Andrew Baud, spokesman for the Professional Cricketers Association, said from London on Monday.

The glacier-turned-cricket ground is at an altitude of 5,184 metres (17,000 feet), and just below base camp on the southern approach to Everest, the world’s highest peak.

“They are taking 40 spare balls up there I can imagine they will need them,” Baud said. “At normal altitude it would take about an hour, but it can get as low as minus 13 degrees Celsius (nine degrees Fahrenheit) so it may take around two,” he said, adding the record attempt was being made from Monday.

There are five professional British county players in the teams and they are trying to raise funds for a fund that assists cricketers in times of hardship, Baud said.

First conquered in 1953 by Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the 8,848-metre (29,198-foot) mountain has since been scaled about 3,000 times. —AFP