Young cricketers from The Canterbury Academy Trust are hoping to head on tour to Sri Lanka next year - but will need to help fundraise beforehand

Young cricketers from The Canterbury Academy Trust are set to head on tour - but will need to help fundraise beforehand.

The Canterbury Academy, winners of The Cricketer Schools 1st XI Hundred competition in the past two years, want to take their pupils to Sri Lanka for 10 days next March.

With the trip expected to cost just shy of £2,000 per family, they will need to raise money to ensure everyone is able to go on what is potentially the trip of a lifetime.

Director of sport Phil Relf, who explained they plan to hold a quiz night at the school in November, led by Kent head coach Matt Walker, said: “We have several families who will probably be okay.

“They will be relatively comfortable raising that sort of money. But equally, for a lot of our families, this will be a real challenge.

“It’s coming in at about £1,900 per family which is a considerable amount of money, particularly in the times that we’re living in at the moment.

“We do have a couple of lads with refugee status. For them to raise this sort of money, it’s a bit of an effort.

“But we’re doing what we can. We have some really good support from local businesses for previous tours so we’re certainly going to be reaching out to them again.

“Any help will be greatly appreciated.

“We plan to run a quiz night at the back-end of November at school where we will be looking for families to raise a bit of support by getting some teams together. I think Kent Cricket are quite interested in helping out. Matt Walker, their head coach, is going to be quizmaster on the night.

“He’s pretty skilled at doing these sorts of things. He’s a bit of a film buff so I’m sure he’ll have some pretty challenging questions around modern films in one of the rounds.

“Kent has been excellent