Kenya Cricket Case Study

Aasif Karim: Cricket Kenya is it’s own enemy
By Sandipan Banerjee

ICC Cricket World Cup 2003 in South Africa — it was one of the most fascinating World Cups in many ways, but the world still remembers it, thanks to the incredible performance of Kenya.

Surprising everyone, this tiny little African nation, which was an Associate member of the International Cricket Council (ICC) at that time, reached the semi-final of the event, beating Test playing nations like Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh. Following their dream run, there were talks in the media that Kenya should be given Test Status, like Jagmohan Dalmiya obliged Bangladesh with the same in 2000, majorly thanks to their victory over Pakistan in 1999 World Cup.

13 years later, Kenya cricket

We took our cricket to a brand new level. Suddenly the whole world was talking about us. But we failed to seize the moment and everything just went wrong for us after that.

Though we did well in the 2003 World Cup, back home our domestic structure was not upto the mark, thanks to the lack professional knowledge of the incompetent administrators in the association. People with zero understanding about the game were at the helm of affairs and they carefully destroyed the sport from our country.

There was corruption charges against the administrators, players. There was infighting. In 2006, when Kenya Cricket Association was dissolved and replaced by Cricket Kenya, we thought the graph would go uphill from there. But Cricket Kenya was equally incompetent. They put the final nail in the coffin.

When your own house is not in order, how can you grow? And now here we are, Kenya are nowhere. They do not even have an ODI status. Even I feel, teams like Uganda, Namibia are in better position at present than Kenya.

CW: Cricket has a rich history in Kenya. The game has its existence in the country since the early 1960’s. But why suddenly has this cricket culture faded away from the

Yes, the cricket is being played in Kenya almost for last 65 years. British brought the game in Kenya. But after independence, the Asian community nurtured it. Initially it was a community sport, which used to be played only on Sundays.

In 1951, first time a cricket match was played in Kenya when the hosts took on Tanganyika. Later in 1953 the Kenyan Cricket Association was formed. In the 1960’s player like Hanif Mohammed played cricket in our country.

You know, earlier we used to be a part of the East African team. In the 1975 World Cup there were seven or eight Kenyan cricketers. We used to dominate East African cricket. It was since 1982, we started playing under our own country’s flag.

In the late 1980’s, cricket was flourishing here. In 1988 Indian team visited Kenya. Apart from that, we used to have players like Sanjay Manjrekar, Sandeep Patil, Chandrakant Pandit, Pravin Amre, Salil Ankola, Balvinder Sandhu, Karsan Ghavri playing club cricket in our country. Even the locals, who had kept safe distance from the game from its beginning, started to embrace it. There used to be 70 to 80 local Africans, playing the Nairobi Club