Hours after their test match win in Sri Lanka, MAG welcomed members of the England cricket team to a landmine clearance site in north-west Sri Lanka.

Joe Root (Captain), Jonny Bairstow, Keaton Jennings and Olly Stone travelled to the site, close to the rural village of Periyamadu to learn about MAG’s life-saving work in the area.

The players were briefed on landmine contamination in Sri Lanka, before being shown the different types of mines MAG discovers.

The cricketers then put on body armour and walked through a recently cleared part of a minefield closely supervised by experienced MAG staff.

The three-decade civil war which ended in 2009 displaced hundreds of thousands of people, many of whom have now returned and are resettling in their former homelands. Yet the ever-increasing demand on land has resulted in returning populations living close to areas known to contain landmines and unexploded bombs.

MAG has been working in Sri Lanka since 2002 locating and removing landmines and other unexploded bombs. Since the end of the conflict in 2009, MAG has released over 35 million square metres of land, cleared over 42,000 mines and 14,800 other unexploded bombs in Sri Lanka.

As well as the immediate threat to life, the inability to develop land for infrastructure such as schools, roads and farms means communities suffer economically. The majority of people living in mine-affected communities are farmers who need the land to survive.