Cricketers to hit new heights
A team of sportsmen are set to travel up Mount Everest and play the world's highest-altitude cricket match for charity.
Participants are set to travel more than halfway up the mountain to Gorak Shep, the highest plateau on Earth where an official game of cricket can be played, to compete in a Twenty20 version of the sport.
International cricketers Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook are set to captain the two teams, while players will only have two-thirds of the oxygen available at sea level while taking part in the match.
The Himalayan Trust UK and youth charity The Lord's Taverners, which donates money to schools and bodies that work to encourage children to enjoy sport, will benefit from the event.
James Kirtley, a Sussex cricketer whose cousin Richard is leading the expedition, said it would be "an exciting experience".
He added: "It's not just enough to get up to the base camp, it's all the other bits and pieces and I think that's what's so exciting about this project and why it should be supported so avidly."
Mount Everest was famously first climbed in 1953 by Sir Edmund Hilary and Tenzing Norgay, while the mountain's Nepalese name means "goddess of the sky".
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