The World's Highest Cricket Match Was Played Steps From Everest Base Camp - Here's the Wild True Story
In 2009, fifty amateurs hauled stumps, a pitch and a pink ball to 5,164 metres and played a full Twenty20 - a record that stood for five years before a mountain in Africa took it back.
Fifty amateur cricketers hauled wooden stumps, a pink leather ball and an improvised pitch to 5,164 metres above sea level - higher than every mountain in Europe or North America outside Denali - and played a full Twenty20 fixture on the wind-scoured glacial plain of Gorak Shep, the last settlement before Everest Base Camp. It held the Guinness World Record for five years. Then a mountain in Tanzania took it back.
Key facts
- On 21 April 2009, two teams played a full Twenty20 match at Gorak Shep, 5,164 metres, the last stop before Everest Base Camp
- Named Hillary and Tenzing, after Everest's first summiteers, the teams used a pink ball and an improvised pitch on glacial sand
- The match held the Guinness World Record for highest-altitude cricket for five years
- On 26 September 2014, a team including ex-England internationals broke it on Mount Kilimanjaro, 5,752 metres - 588 m higher
Cricket at the roof of the world
On 21 April 2009, two teams calling themselves Hillary and Tenzing - after Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay, the first men confirmed to reach the summit of Everest in 1953 - lined up on Gorak Shep, a flat expanse of glacial sand and rubble at roughly 5,164 to 5,165 metres, the final stop before trekkers reach Everest Base Camp itself. The expedition had spent close to two years fundraising, training and planning before around 50 participants trekked in for the charity venture, playing a curtailed Twenty20 match with a pink ball chosen for visibility against the grey moraine and snow. Batting and bowling at that altitude is its own extreme sport: the air holds roughly half the oxygen available at sea level, a full sprint between wickets leaves most players gasping, and every participant had already spent well over a week acclimatising just to stand upright and swing a bat without seeing stars.
The record that lasted five years
Gorak Shep held the Guinness World Records title for highest-altitude cricket match until 26 September 2014, when a team of current and former internationals - including former England captain Heather Knight, ex-England spinner Ashley Giles and former South Africa fast bowler Makhaya Ntini - played a 10-over-a-side match inside the crater at the summit of Mount Kilimanjaro, 5,752 metres up: 588 metres higher than Gorak Shep. Knight's Gorillas beat Giles's Rhinos by 19 runs, 83 for 5 to 64 for 9, in a match cut short by cloud cover after 88 minutes. Gorak Shep's five-year reign was over, but the fact remains: this improbable sport has now been played, on purpose, on two different continents' highest reachable cricket pitches - and one of them is a two-week trek from Lukla.
| Detail | Gorak Shep, Nepal | Kilimanjaro, Tanzania |
|---|---|---|
| Date | 21 Apr 2009 | 26 Sep 2014 |
| Altitude | 5,164 m | 5,752 m |
| Format | Twenty20 | 10 overs a side |
| Record held | 2009-2014 | 2014-present |
What this means for trekkers
What this means for you
You will not find a pitch marked out at Gorak Shep today - the 2009 match was a one-off logistical feat, not a fixture. But the village itself is very real and very reachable: it is the standard overnight stop the night before summiting Kala Patthar for sunrise views of Everest, and virtually every Everest Base Camp itinerary passes directly through it. Getting there starts the same way it did for the 2009 cricketers - flying into Lukla, the world's most dangerous airport, then trekking roughly eight to nine days up the Khumbu valley through Namche and Tengboche before the final push to Gorak Shep and base camp.
Source: Guinness World Records, cross-referenced with ESPNcricinfo and CBS News coverage of the 2009 Everest Test and the 2014 Mt Kili Madness match on Kilimanjaro.
Cover photo: Gerd Eichmann via Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 4.0).
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