Chippenham Cricket Club cyclists go into bat for charity

Six cyclists from a village cricket club have set themselves the challenge of riding 170 miles in two days to raise cash for vital diabetes research and club funds.

The ride will take place over the weekend of May 25-26, setting out from Chippenham Cricket Club in Wiltshire and ending at Chippenham Cricket Club in Cambridgeshire.

Leading the team for the Chippenham Challenge will be Shona Rutherford, who last rode in a charity event in June 1999, the year she was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes.

She decided to take on the cycle challenge to mark the 25th anniversary of living with disease and her 50th birthday this year.

Shona, who lives in Chippenham, has been a member of the cricket club for many years and plays in its women’s team.

“I was involved with the club’s Dusk Til Dawn cricket match fund-raiser in 2017 which raised money for both causes and it inspired me to raise funds for them both again,” she said.

“It would mean so much to me to find a cure to alleviate the constant routine of finger pricks, blood tests and injections that people living with type 1 have to do on a daily basis.”

Shona, who works for the Newmarket-based Thoroughbred Breeders’ Association, will be joined on the ride by her partner, Greg Hooley, who works at the National Stud and is also a cricket club member, as is their neighbour Richard Ward, who will be riding with his son Liam who also has Type 1 diabetes.

Friend Will Tate, manager at Deerfield Farm Stud in Dullingham, will also be in the team, as will Greg’s brother Mark.

Chippenham Cricket Club chairman Darren Hughes said the club had more than 200 members, half of them juniors aged from five years, plus girls’ and women’s teams.

“A number of our members have type 1 diabetes and we are so pleased Shona will be sharing funds from the challenge with us. Fund-raising is critical to the club’s survival and our ability to continue to offer cricket opportunities to all ages.”

About 400,000 people in the UK, including nearly 30,000 children, live with type 1 diabetes and rely on multiple life-saving injections or pump infusions. A child diagnosed at the age of five faces up to 19,000 injections and 50,000 finger-prick blood tests by the time they are 18.

To help the team hit their target of £3,000 go to gofund.me/60e6d4cb or on the Go Fund Me page search for Chippenham Challenge.