Twenty20 cricket goes to Everest

Twenty20 cricket is all set to touch a new high with some British amateurs gearing up to play a fund-raising match at Gorak Shep -- just 135 meters below the Everest base camp -- on April 21.

The unique cricket match will be played at an altitude of 5,165 meters and the teams will be named after Tenzing Norgay and Edmund Hillary, the mountaineer duo who scaled the 8,848-metre peak for the first time in 1953.

The match, aiming to raise 2,50,000 pounds for UK-based The Himalayan Trust, will be first to be played at such a high altitude, according to Ang Tsering Sherpa, President of the Nepal Mountaineering Association.

The amateur players, aged between 22 and 36, along with other support staff, will spend nine days at the venue before the match to get acclimatised with the weather and environment there.

They will also carry a plastic-made pitch while the match will be played with a pink ball.