On a mission to revive Kenyan cricketing prowess

RETIRED world cricket stars will return to the Nairobi Gymkhana cricket pitch to relive their flashy heyday when they meet in Nairobi for the inaugural Legends Cup, scheduled to take place from July 19 to 28.

The 10-day tournament, organised by Crickeley Management Ltd, will feature three franchise teams, comprising players from Kenya, South Africa, Zimbabwe, West Indies and England; an Asia team that includes India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, and Asia Pacific – bringing together players from Australia and New Zealand, Xinhua reported.

“We want to bring back the cricket culture and the excitement that goes with the game through the tournament. We have realised that part of the reason Kenyan cricket has declined rapidly is the lack of proper role models for our young players to look up to,” said Chidambaran Subramanian, the chairman of the organising committee.

To set the ball rolling, two legends of the Indian cricket team, Sayeed Kirmani and Balwinder Sandhu, were in Nairobi recently to grace the official launching ceremony.

The two were joined by local legends of the game, Maurice Odumbe, Steve Tikolo and Aasif Karim, who said they had come to support the event.

The opening ceremony for the tournament, slated for July 19, will be preceded by bidding and tendering processes for players.

Other than the action in the pitch, the organisers hope to inspire the growth of the game at a grassroots and schoollevel, through clinics that will be conducted by the legends.

The tourney will be held at a time when the standards of cricket in the country are at an all-time low after Kenya, as late as 2003, was in a special group of Associate member countries of the International Cricket Council (ICC) that were on the brink of acquiring the much coveted Test status, and now languishes in the group of minnows.

Following the latest development in the game, former international cricketers have called for a meeting on April 14 to salvage the standards of the game that is currently on a nose-dive mode in the country.

The players, who plied their trade for the East African nation during the game’s prime, between 1960 and 1990, will meet in Nairobi to discuss the crisis facing the once popular sport at board level, and the national team’s performance. The game plunged into further calamity after a section of the national leadership, led by the chairperson Jackie Janmohammed, resigned after Kenya’s poor performance at the U-18 Cricket World Cup and the country’s latest dive into the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Cricket League Division Three.

For the last 12 years, Kenya has cumulatively received over $17 million from the ICC for the development of the game and administrative purposes.

Sadly, the cricket-loving public is yet to see statements of accounts on how the money has been utilised.