By Matt Somerford
December 26 will mark the 10-year anniversary of the Boxing Day Tsunami that devastated Asia’s Indian Ocean coast.
One of the deadliest natural disasters ever claimed the lives of around 230,000 people across 14 countries. Sri Lanka was one of the hardest hit nations – almost 40,000 lives were lost there alone – and parts of it are still yet to fully recover.
In the wake of the tragedy the worldwide humanitarian response was swift and significant – around £9billion was donated – to help piece together the lives of those affected by the tidal surges, which were as high as 30 metres in some parts and eroded shoreline communities.
As the years have passed heart-warming acts of selflessness from the international community are still emerging and, as the initial funding and donations have dwindled, have arguably become even more important.
Cricket can lay claim to one such story, its unlikely origins set in the 2012 World Twenty20, when Yorkshire-born builder Justin Peacock had initially intended to attend only as a fan.
Several 'sliding doors' moments later – involving a yoga teacher and a tuk-tuk driver-turned-handyman named Priyantha – and Peacock is fully invested, both personally and financially, in a self-starting project that has provided opportunities to 1,000 students at Galle’s Gintota Maha Vidyala School, as well as orphans at the Yasodara Girls Orphanage, that they could never have imagined.
Peacock has most significantly carried out much-needed repair work on both – an undertaking made completely off his own back – but he has also revived a cricket programme at Gintota that has turned him into a bit of a local legend.
Before Peacock arrived, the school had no cricket facilities after being decimated by the tsunami which claimed the lives of 55 of its students and eight teachers.
UNICEF rebuilt the school's classrooms but the cricket facilities remained lost until Peacock's unlikely arrival almost three years ago.
Before then the children trained on a local field once a month, if their parents were able to stump up the money to hire it, and the basic equipment they did have was shared thin among a large student population.
One of Peacock's first acts after arriving at the school, set on the banks of the Gin Ganga river west of Galle, was to build a concrete-based net on the school grounds that the cricket-mad students have trained on just about every day since.
He has purchased a host of equipment – including bespoke playing shirts with the maroon and gold school badge – as well as finding and part-funding the employment of a fully-qualified coach that the school would never have been able to afford.
He has done this while helping to renovate a decaying 80-year-old girls’ orphanage just down the road and earlier this year Peacock also began a project to build netball courts and provide equipment for the girls at Gintota.
“People ask me why I do it and I can only say that I grew up my whole life with good facilities, which were not far from home and they were free with good coaching,” Peacock told ecb.co.uk.
“These kids deserve the same, if not more, and little by little I want to help provide that.”
In such circumstances cliches are forgivable if not unavoidable.
Peacock's story is, however, hardly routine as his easy-going yet curious nature has led him down a path to discovering his benevolent spirit.
“I initially went out there in 2012 for the Twenty20 World Cup and then that’s when I found out about the orphanage. I then found out about the school through my Sri Lankan yoga teacher!" he laughed.
"I'd already started helping out at the orphanage and my tuk-tuk driver, Priyantha, took me to the school and it has all happened from then.
"Priyantha has become my right-hand man since. I call him my supervisor.
"He knows a little bit about building but most importantly he knew everywhere to go to get the materials and I can't speak a word of Sinhalese so he took over the negotiations on that front.
"I still use him every day. He now brings me my breakfast too.
“He was the original driver who took me to the orphanage. It was very lucky because on my first day at the hotel I just asked for a tuk-tuk driver and it was him who took me to the orphanage.
"That worked out pretty well."
It was not until five years after the tsunami struck that UNICEF was able to rebuild the basic classrooms to replace those that had stood for over a century at Gintota.
Among the large-scale revival, rebuilding sporting facilities were understandably not a priority, and Peacock’s generosity has been worth close to £6,000 and many man hours.
It’s an expense he glosses over instead preferring to focus on the funding contributed by his cricketing friends.
Once Peacock realised scale of the job he had taken on he contacted friends he has made while playing cricket in the United Kindom and Australia to try and fill the shortfall in money he required.
“The response was immediate," he said.
"It was quite overwhelming and considerable actually. I sent out an e-mail to let people know this is what I wanted to do. I couldn't pay for everything and it was amazing how quickly the people I knew through cricket wanted to help out."
The 40-year-old was a handy club-level all-rounder playing in both England and Australia – although his rather curious career highlight came in the middle of a horse track in Tallinn when he helped bounce out the Estonia captain with the first ball of the match during a tour of the Baltic countries with Welsh club side Carmel and Districts Cricket Club.
Despite being born in England, Peacock grew up in Australia before returning to England for seven years to live in Newcastle during his thirties. He has since returned back to his home-town of Perth, from where he has now made four trips to Sri Lanka to continue his work in Galle.
“When I first arrived at the orphanage and then the school there was a lot to do,” he added.
“Within three weeks of sending that first e-mail, and then getting quotes for materials, I was able to begin work.”
Understandably there was little resistance to his aid once he told the owners of the orphanage and then Gintota school principal, Mr Ranjith, of his plans.
“It was all positive, especially when they knew it was my own money!” he said.
“Then it was a case of finding a place to start. The roofs at the orphanage were leaking so I started fixing that. That’s always a good place to start.”
Peacock's first encounter at the school followed, and he was left blown away by the students' almost unquenchable desire to play cricket after offering to run a coaching clinic.
"I organised to do a two-day coaching course – that was through the yoga teacher - and they completely wore me out," he said.
“It was a little bit intimidating because I rolled up there and you’ve got 50 kids and none of them spoke good English.
"Everything had to be demonstrated, we got by through hand signals, but it hardly mattered because they didn't want to stop training.
“They wore me out in those two days. It was stinking hot, middle of summer. I’m serious, I was absolutely shattered.”
It was then that Peacock knew he had to rebuild the cricket facilities and sent out the e-mail request for added funds from his cricketing friends.
“Like I said the response was almost instant,” he said.
“After that Priyantha and I did all the costing, and with the blessing of the school administration and principal we started building the net and laying the concrete slab in a corner of the school.
“We got some local labour to help us and, while we got hit by some monsoonal rain which set us back a bit, it was all completed in about four weeks.”
Unknown to Peacock the school organised a grand opening of the net on his next visit to celebrate his gift to them.
It was a fitting recognition, quite literally, of his applaudable philanthropic pathway into the unknown.
“I didn’t know they were going to do that. I just rocked up in my shorts and thongs [flip-flops] and next thing I know there’s hired dancers and a school band to play at this opening ceremony,” he said.
“We cut the ribbon in front of a 1,000 schoolchildren. All the cricket boys gave me a guard of honour. It was humbling.
“Then I had to face first ball, which was about as nervous as I’ve ever been in my cricket life.
“The ball was delivered by the school principal who is a pretty crafty bloke. Thankfully I got a good defensive stroke behind it – pushed it for one and got off strike.”
It would not be the last ball Peacock has faced in that net since – with the gracious schoolchildren mobbing him on each of his return trips for the chance to train alongside him.
“That’s one of the things I love about it there, the kids are so polite,” he said.
“When you walk through the school there are kids who call out. I don’t know them but they know me. They all say thank you many times over.
“They haven’t just taken the pitch and run. They want me to bat and bowl and they listen to what I say...even though it’s not in Sinhalese.
“I also built them a shed to put all the equipment in that we’ve bought for them and they maintained it perfectly.
“The net gets used basically every day they can so I couldn’t be happier.”
Since erecting the practice wicket, and finding a coach which Peacock part funds with one of the friends who responded to his initial e-mail, the improvement in the school’s performances on the pitch have been just as rewarding.
Gintota fields teams from under-13s to under-19s level and while Peacock has not been able to see as many games as he would have hoped – he usually has to return to Perth when the season begins – he is routinely updated on results.
“There are some very talented cricketers there,” he said.
“The problem at Gintota is they compete against the richer schools, but they have beaten the richer schools.
“It’s one of those classic stories of how their kids are good enough but they can’t afford to go to the better schools to get the coaching.
“But they have beaten them, not all the time, but they have done it.”
It leads to the question as to whether one day Gintota might produce a player capable of pulling on the Sri Lanka shirt.
“That’d be great,” said Peacock, laughing off the notion of them following in his footsteps after his unlikely taste of international cricket in Estonia.
“It’s not the aim obviously; I’m just happy to give them the chance to train every day. I’d love to see some of them push on to any sort of higher standard because like I say there are some really talented players.
“It would be humbling if one day someone who started training on that net played for Sri Lanka.”
If so the local legend of Justin Peacock in Gintota might just begin to spread even further.