Sir Andrew Strauss hopes turning Lord’s ‘Red for Ruth’ during this week’s Ashes Test can help his charity support thousands more families as they deal with the impact of a terminal cancer diagnosis.
The former England captain set up the Ruth Strauss Foundation in memory of his late wife, who died in 2018 from a non-smoking lung cancer, and has worked alongside the cricket community to raise funds and awareness for the past four years.
Day two of England’s second Test against Australia will once again see Lord’s awash in red, with players from both sides joining fans and pundits in marking the occasion in colourful fashion.
The foundation has already been able to achieve some oits aims in providing pre-bereavement counselling for children and partners, training for healthcare professionals and peer-to-peer support networks, but Strauss believes the surface has only just been scratched and sees the elevated platform of this summer’s series as a catalyst.
“We’ve still got a long way to go. The more we do, the more we need to do and the broader our reach needs to be,” he said.
“Hopefully an Ashes Test match is a time where people who aren’t always watching cricket are suddenly tuning in. We understand the opportunity we have in front of us in the next few days.
“We’re excited about having the platform to show that and we’re incredibly lucky to have so much support from the cricket community. But we know people are going through this from all walks of life, some of whom having never heard of cricket or the Ruth Strauss Foundation.
“We’re here to help as many people as possible. We’ve helped hundreds of families and directly trained up hundreds of nurses, but we feel the reach is expanding all the time.
“I can honestly say we’ve got anywhere near where we want to. This still very near to the start of the journey for us. The support we get allows us to turn those hundreds into thousands and those thousands into tens of thousands. This is about scaling up what we can offer.
“There’s 127 children every day losing a parent and we want to be there for the majority of them.”
Strauss is aware that the doors of Lord’s may not be thrown open to him had he not been a decorated former England skipper, but is increasingly determined to use that privileged position for good.
“Without the success I had on the cricket field I wouldn’t have had this platform,” he said.
“I was very proud of what I achieved in an England shirt. That was about me and achieving my goals, but this is about something much greater than me.
“It breaks my heart that every day there are hundreds of kids being put into the situation that my kids were put into. We can’t change that but we can make it a little bit easier.”
http://ruthstraussfoundation.com