Cricket for Care

Sports has long been known to erase cultural and religious barriers and bring people from all walks of life, all over the world. At FoG, we are passionate about sports and dedicate a huge part of our work to providing rural boys and girls with better sporting opportunities. Be it swimming classes, cricket coaching, table tennis lessons or karate practice we strive to offer the best quality training for our beneficiaries, completely free of charge. 

Sri Lanka is a country with Cricket in our blood, with enthusiasm for the sport igniting everyone from the smallest toddler to the oldest grandfather. Our Founder Mr. Kushil Gunasekera is an ardent fan with school colours for the sport and with many cricketing legends such as Muthiah Muralidaran, Kumar Sangakkara, Mahela Jayawardena and Russel Arnold being our trustees, cricket has a special place in our hearts. We have cricket coaching camps in the North and South and have had inspiring success stories from both ladies cricket, men’s cricket and special needs cricket. An important aspect of this training is the need for good quality cricket equipment. It is only then that our rural beneficiaries can truly reach their full potential.  

Therefore, we are immensely grateful to Mr. Shyam Bhatia from India, who has once again sent us 50 cricket bags full of cricket equipment, under his ‘Cricket for Care’ initiative. This is the second year that he has donated equipment to us and has now made a pledge to continue this donation of 50 cricket bags and equipment to Sri Lanka annually, to support our rural cricket development programmes and coaching camps. Moreover, we applaud the fact that, in the true spirit of unity and harmony, Mr. Shyam Bhatia requested that the bags be distributed equally all over the island, irrespective of race or religion.  

We have been able to distribute these bags to 47 different rural schools and 3 FoG sponsored sporting programmes all over the island, including Jaffna, Kilinochchi, Mullaitivu, Mannar, Anuradhapura, Batticaloa, Ampara, Monaragala, Hatton, Nuwara Eliya and Galle! This equipment will greatly benefit and support our rural beneficiaries to develop their cricketing activities and we hope to see national and international level players emerge from their ranks.