"Hope everything turns out great for you . . . "
"If you can imagine it, create it. If you dream it you can become it . . . "
"May you win all the matches and millions of hearts . . . "
Those, and hundreds of other messages handwritten on a board that hangs in a Mumbai college for women, is dedicated to Sydney Sixers batsman Ryan Carters and they'll inspire him during the summer's Big Bash League.
Carters, who studies philosophy and analyses Weberian sociology and Keynesian economics at university, wants to help make a difference in the Third World and he believes tertiary education was one way to ensure such changes as empowering women.
He will continue the Batting For Change campaign he initiated last summer in conjunction with the LBW [Learning for a Better World Trust] while he played for Sydney Thunder.
Teammates, opposing players, sponsors and the public pledged money for every six the Thunder struck and by the tournament's end raised $30,000, which funded the construction of three new classrooms at the Heartland School in Kathmandu.
After joining cross-town rivals, the Sixers, Carters upped the ante. He now wants to raise $66,666 to subsidise the educational fees for underprivileged women studying degrees in science, commerce or arts in Mumbai.
"I love that through Batting For Change my Sixers teammates and I can walk out to bat knowing as well as the normal motivations of having a great cheering crowd and wanting to do our best for our team we're also supporting women's education in India," the 24-year-old said.
"It's wonderful to know if we happen to strike one off the middle and the ball goes out of the ground there's another one or two thousand dollars to support women's education."
Carters, who gained an appreciation for other cultures and the life-changing value of education when he spent time in Peru as a boy, understood the problems that defined poverty in the developing world.
"Access to basic nutrition, clean water, shelter, medicine," he said. "All of those things are important, but I think education is the way to unlock the door to alleviating poverty in all those dimensions.
"If someone has completed high school education under challenging conditions - growing up in poor areas of Mumbai, for instance - I think, if we can subsidise their university education and allow for them to get a bachelor degree they'll have the freedom, and control, to choose to do what they want with their life.
"They'll be able to find employment, raise a family of their own and in such a way their kids are also well educated, have good health and nutrition. That inter-generational cycle is an important aspect."
Carters, who scored a painstaking 198 for NSW in the recent Sheffield Shield match against Queensland, said there was a good motive for cricket to help women in the third world.
"We can send a powerful message as a male sporting team that we stand for gender equality," he said.
"Looking at the world as a whole it's obvious there isn't perfect gender equality, it varies from country to country, especially in the developing cricket-playing nations. There aren't the same opportunities in life for women growing up in poverty even when compared to men from the same socio-economic level.
"There's literature which suggests educating women is a very powerful and impactful poverty alleviation strategy. The benefit of educating women is not only do they go on to lead happy and prosperous lives. but [those] women generally control the family matters at home; they tend to have less children but those children are generally better educated, they have better nutritional outcomes and live healthier, happy lives themselves."
Darshak Mehta, the chairman of The LBW Trust, echoed the sentiment Cricket NSW boss Andrew Jones shared when he recalled a conversation he and Carters had last year and it was suggested the student of life batted better for other people than for himself.
"He's a 24-year-old with a 48-year-old's head," said Mehta. "He has an acute social conscience and it's very rare for people to have the depth of concern Ryan has for others."
