Sir John Major’s Comments on the Thirtieth Anniversary of Cricket for Change – 12 October 2011

The text of Sir John Major’s comments on the thirtieth anniversary of Cricket for Change, made on the 12th October 2011.

SIR JOHN MAJOR:

I warmly congratulate Cricket for Change on its thirtieth anniversary.

Its founders realised at the time that cricket had great healing properties, that it could do a great deal socially, as well as being a sport that people could enjoy.

They’ve now spent thirty years developing that theme. Cricket for Change was born out of the Brixton Riots in 1981 and since then the amount of work that has been done has been quite extraordinary as the founders have used the healing properties of sport, and especially cricket in order to bring people together. A great deal has happened in that time. I remember hosting a fund-raising dinner in Downing Street in the early 1990s, and at that time I think there were just four members of the charity exclusively involved with London, there are now well over twenty.

The development of the expertise has been so great that the UNICEF, the ICC and other bodies now turn to them for help. The original concept, as we’ve seen with the troubles in our own country this summer, is still needed.

I believed in the aspects of this charity from the outset, I believed its aims was right, I believed its focus was right. I believed it could do a great deal. So far it has achieved all that’s been asked of it, and I’m sure there’s a great deal more to come.

I warmly congratulate them again on their thirtieth anniversary and I look forward to what they can achieve in the next thirty years that are still to come.