Pune, September 25: After getting warm appreciation from the Indian and international cricketers ‘Blades of Glory’, a gallery of cricket memorabilia set up by collector Rohan Pate is all set to start a fresh new chapter with an intention to inspire young minds.

     'Blades of Glory' has launched 'Prerana', a special drive that would encourage schools to send their students to visit this wonderful facility as a part of their field visit and give them an opportunity to watch the cricketing stuff of their favorite cricketers, only to get delighted to see it from such a close distance and to get inspired.

     The initiative was today launched at the hands of Brett Lee - one of Australia’s all time great pace bowlers, who visited ‘Blades of Glory’ for the second time for the purpose mentioned above. Lee had visited the gallery in May 2012, when he was in the city for IPL. Children from St. Vincent’s High School, Camp and S. N. B. P. School from Shastri Nagar Yerwada were present on the occasion along with Rohan Pate.

Speaking about the concept Rohan Pate, Founder of Blades of Glory said,
"Though Cricket is treated like a religion in India, there was not a single facility available which would preserve and impart the inspiring stories of legendary cricketers to the current and the generation next. This gap prompted me to set up ‘Blades of Glory’, which today has taken a wonderful shape of one of its kind Gallery of Cricket memorabilia."

"Cricketers often become idols in this cricket crazy country and thus one of the objectives behind this effort was to contribute towards inspiring young minds.Keeping this in mind, we are today launching ‘Prerana’, which means inspiration in Marathi, a specially designed program for school children, where we shall encourage schools and school children to come and visit Blades of Glory", he added.

     Under this 'Prerana' initiative, a special contact program with schools in Pune would be run over the next three months. When school children come to visit the Gallery, a specially made audio visual presentation about the concept of the Gallery and the precious collection that it houses would be shown to them, before their guided tour of the gallery.

     This audio visual presentation would narrate the interesting stories behind the cricketing stuff present here, which belongs to some of the greatest players that the world of cricket has seen including the master blaster Sachin Tendulkar, Sir Vivian Richards, M. Muralidharan, Malcolm Marshall, Jack Kallis, Brian Lara, Saurav Ganguly, M. S. Dhoni, Virendra Sehwag, Rahul Dravid, Desmond Haynes and Brett Lee to name a few.

     This audio visual presentation shall help in setting the context right before the children start their gallery tour, so that they are aware of the extraordinary collection present in the gallery and enjoy it more during their guided tour. The guided tour would be conducted by the specially trained personnel, who would help children in establishing the connection between the stories narrated in the audio visual presentation and the related collection. After hearing the stories and then seeing the same stuff in front of them would surely make it an exciting experience, which may ultimately lead in inspiring them to do something in life.

     Ticket rates for the visitors are Rs.50 (For School Field Trips only)

Brett Lee launches Prerana', a special initiative for school children at Blades of Glory in Marathi