H&D Awarded Defibrillator Donated By New Cricket Charity

Gosport Borough, Hythe & Dibden and Sparsholt were among the immediate beneficiaries following the official launch of the Hampshire Cricket Foundation, the newly relaunched charity aligned to Hampshire Cricket and the Ageas Bowl, with the aim of delivering a healthier future for people across the county by raising funds to support four key objectives - 
1. Provision of a life-saving public access defibrillator and training for its use for each of the 160 affiliated cricket clubs in Hampshire,
2. Screening of every 14-year-old club cricketer in Hampshire each year and to support a range of other cardiovascular screening programmes at the Ageas Bowl and at facilities across the County
3. The introduction of a Healthy Heart Programme across all Hampshire primary schools to help reduce the levels of childhood obesity, and
4. Offer 3,000 heart patients a supervised exercise and rehabilitation programme each year.
The launch was marked with a special Hampshire Cricket Foundation Christmas Lunch, hosted by TMS and Sky Cricket presenter Charles Dagnall, at the Ageas Bowl last week, with over 250 turning out to mark the occasion. 
                                                                                    Life saving
The event, which helped raise more than £14,000 for the charity, also included a cheque presentation of £10,000 to Cardiac Risk in the Young for heart screening and the presentation of four life-saving defibrillators to local cricket clubs; Sparsholt, Steep, Hythe & Dibden and Gosport Borough.
Stuart Robertson, Hampshire Cricket Foundation Director, said: “The Charity Christmas Lunch marked the launch of a very exciting new phase in the development of the Hampshire Cricket Foundation and it feels that we are at the start of something very special. The Hampshire Cricket Foundation will change and save lives in our community and at the same time will help to make every cricket club, the heartbeat of its community.”
Heart and circulatory disease kills one in four people in the UK and remains the world’s biggest killer whilst there are 30,000 out of home cardiac arrests in the UK each year. One in three children in the UK are overweight or obese by the time they leave Primary School and one in four adults in the UK are considered obese. All of these issues are something the Hampshire Cricket Foundation is passionate about tackling.  
For more details please visit the charity’s website at www.ageasbowl.com/community, contact community@ageasbowl.com or call 023 8047 2002 and ask for Hampshire Cricket Foundation.
The Hampshire Cricket Foundation is a registered charity (Charity No. 1152024).