All-rounder Luis Reece is about to embark on a year’s worth of challenges in an attempt to raise funds and awareness for a trio of charities.
Grouped as ‘Luis’ Charity Challenges’, the 28-year-old will take part in a challenge each month in 2019 with proceeds being split between the Professional Cricketers’ Trust, Mind and Cardiac Risk in the Young (CRY).
Reece enjoyed a prolific opening season with Derbyshire in 2017, during which he scored 433 T20 runs at an average of 36 and 732 first-class runs including two centuries. Despite building on this form at the start of the 2018 summer, he was ruled out for much of the season with a metatarsal injury suffered during the Royal London One-Day Cup.
It was at this point he came up with the unique fundraising idea, which has since received support from the Professional Cricketers’ Association (PCA).
Reece will be taking suggestions from the public across his social media platforms to decide on a different challenge each month. He will then put suggested challenges forward with the public voting to choose one specific charity challenge each month until December 2019.
Formally known as the PCA Benevolent Fund, the Professional Cricketers’ Trust will be a beneficiary of the challenges with the registered charity created to support the lifelong health and well-being of PCA members and their immediate families.
The Trust looks out for players throughout their active careers and long afterwards, funding life-changing medical assistance, crisis helplines and educational programmes in England and Wales.
Their work is important to the Derbyshire top-order batsman and left-arm bowler, as is the contributions of all three charities.
He said: “It’s something I’ve been thinking about for a while now and I’m really excited to finally get it all started. The three charities mean a lot to me personally and I really want to give something back to charities that have helped me.
“The lads and staff at Derbyshire all know about it and I’m hoping we can raise a decent amount of funds for three charities that mean a lot to me.
“The whole concept is for other people to decide what I have to do in order to raise money, so I’m excited to see some of the suggestions that come in. I want to make these challenges as interactive as possible so I think it will really help if people can see what I’m getting up to and how I’m getting on,” Reece added.
“If I can raise even more awareness for them and the work they do then that can only be a benefit.”
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