The importance of being yourself: A review of #Kenya’s #cricket tour of U.A.E

Kenya’s national cricket team have been in The U.A.E for most of the last fortnight. They were there on the urgent business of breathing new like into their faltering World Cup Qualifying and Intercontinental Cup campaigns. The opponents on this tour would be Canada. A team with even dimmer hopes of success in these competitions than, Kenya, but one that Kenya has struggled to dispatch from time to time. As it was, Kenya swept the ODI World Cup Qualifiers and took a maximum 20 points in the 4 day Intercontinental Cup tie. The only blemish being sharing the largely inconsequential (in the sense that only pride was at stake) t20 series 1-1.

The ODI And intercontinental cup wins were built on the back of several individuals sticking to their strengths in spite of the fact that they ran counter to popular perception of the best way to in about being successful in the various forms of cricket. I’m going to highlight 3 in particular. Irfan Karim, Rakep Patel and Nehemiah Odhiambo.

I’ll start with Irfan. The first time this blogger heard about him was from the captain of my high school cricket team, who couldn’t stop raving about this kid he had seen in a rival school that had mastered all all the stuff that we were still coming to grips with in the school senior team. Since then he’s popped up from time to time on this blog as I’ve covered Kenya’s youth team. Together with Emmanuel Bundi and Lucas Oluoch, he represents the best of Cricket Kenya’s nascent youth development programme. From there, it was his break out season as the anchor of the championship winning Coast Pekee batting lineup and straight into the Kenya team against Ireland in September of last year. Throughout, his batting method has defied the popular trend of explosive, hyper aggressive ‘modern’ One Day openers. It has been more of a slow yet, certain accumulation of runs built on staying in and staying in and staying in. Yet it was that patience and composure that was so key in Kenya’s opening ODI win against Canada. A patient 65 anchored Kenya to a wicket victory 6 win. The 2nd match saw a more aggressive Karim, but more importantly it saw him rewarded with his maiden One Day Century, as Kenya overcame a helter skelter start from the Canadians to close out a second 6 wicket win.

The second player I’m looking at is rather different. A product of the Kanbis Cricket Club, Rakep Patel, has been in the national squad for several seasons, yet his obvious talent has yet to be harnessed as he has only really started to get a defined role within th team. Coming in on the back of several years of topping the NPCA runs charts, he has seen himself plugged into pretty much every gap in Kenya’s batting schemes without ever really settling to a set role. On this tour, he was batting in the middle order, and though in the one day games were a foregone conclusion by the time he came in to bat, his intervention in the 1st innings of the intercontinental cup was as game changing as any I’ve witnessed in a 2 innings game. Canada were on a high, having squeezed an extra 112 runs out of their last 3 wickets of their 1st innings, and the Kenyan innings was starting to wobble when he came out to bat at No. 5. Conventional wisdom says in that situation the smart thing to do is, consolidate, take it easy, get your eye in (says the cricket jargon for it) and so on. Rakep on the other hand, in partnership with Tanmay Mishra, attacked the Canadian bowling right from ball number one, and just like that Kenya’s score went from 91/3 to 201/3. The best part of the innings was it wasn’t just a quick 6 and out affair. Rakep kept going and going, crossing the magic 100 run mark in 103. When the Canadians finally it him out for 130, the momentum had totally shifted in Kenya’s favour, setting up the third player I’ll look at’s intervention as Kenya rode the psychological blow struck by that innings to victory.

The player in question is Nehemiah Odhiambo. Making his debut in the national team in the first days of the new Cricket Kenya administration, he has slowly evolved into the leader of Kenya’s pace bowling battery, inheriting the job from such legends as Thomas Odoyo and Peter Ongondo, during a difficult time resultswise for Kenya. Given the time that was remaining in the game, even in light of Rakep’s earlier intervention, the smart money was Canada to escape with a draw, and Kenya to rue another poor result. Not on Nemi’s watch though. Leading from the front, he skewered the Canadian batting to come away with a career best 5 wickets for 45 runs bowling performance. From there Kenya’s victory was assured and though a finals appearance in the Intercontinental Cup is still 2 wins and several doses of good luck away, with bowling like that Kenya should go into their final games against Afghanistan and Scotland with greater confidence.

Kuchotewa Nayo?

A couple of hours ago, Kenya’s national football team came within 1 1/2 minutes of pulling off their first ever win over Nigeria’s Super Eagles. As it was, a injury time equalizer means the final score was 1-1. Kenya now have 2 points from 3 games in their World Cup Qualifier group whilst Nigeria have 5.

Granted the result is very small in the bigger picture of Kenya’s World cup qualifying hopes, within of itself it is still an achievement worth noting. After all Nigeria are the reigning champions of Africa. Over the past few hours the leading lights in Kenyan politics have been pouring money on this team with the likes of Uhuru Kenyatta, Raila Odinga and even Nairobi Senator elect, Gideon Mbuvi alias Sonko taking to social media to declare their acts of outrageous generosity to Harambee Stars.

The question in my head just now is haven’t we been here before? From Harambee Stars to Conjestina Achieng to our national cricket team and several others, this blogger has witnessed all manner of monied types in Kenyan society going out there way to be seen to be generous to some sports person or team while the getting is good, only to vanish without a trace when said team suffers a few bad results. Don’t all sports teams and athletes everywhere go through patches of poor form from time to time? This blogger understands that several politicians in the current mad rush of goodies belong to the Jubilee Coalition that won the last general elections, and that their manifesto has all manner of commitments regarding long term investment in sports. That is a post for another day. What gripes me is that if the people making policy for our sports team see them only as charity cases, to be milked for PR purposes when the occasional moment of glory or desperation allows it, can they really hope to see the kind of sound and long term interventions that make world beaters?

On a (very tongue in cheek) final note, Kenya’s 7s team are having quite the break out season on the World Series circuit and are in the Main Cup Quarter finals in Hong Kong. We’ve got a cross country team in Bydgosczc (sp?) for the world championships on Sunday morning. The same place they damn near won everything, and our cricket team just got back from Dubai, where they man handled Canada in a pair of World Cup Qualifiers and Intercontinental Cup. Any spare change for them?

Kenya’s Tribalism And Other African Madness; Why Ethnicity Is A Myth And Voodoo Political Science

Here’s the other side of how Kenyans vote debate. The one where folks take time to think through the position rather than settle for convenient slogans.

Kenya’s Tribalism And Other African Madness; Why Ethnicity Is A Myth And Voodoo Political Science.

Time for jokes is finished! #Kenya and the #t20 #Cricket World Cup

This weekend Kenya’s national cricket team are in Uganda to participate in the Africa leg of the pre-qualifiers of the 2014 T20 World Cup. Up until recently Kenya’s relatively strong historical performances meant that they were already pre-qualified to the final stage (global) qualifiers and we only entered a team to give exposure to up and coming young talent. However at the last global qualifier, the team’s overall ranking meant that not only were they far away from making the world cup, but they lost their automatic qualifier slot to Namibia, who themselves were only one game from making the World Cup itself. This time around they absolutely must finish in the top two to be assured of a space, as one of Africa’s two representatives, in the Global Qualifier in Dubai later this year.

Cricket Kenya have therefore, I believe, sent out the strongest team available for the tournament to be absolutely sure of making it out of this stage, never mind that, of the other teams in the competition, only Uganda have any kind of history of being competitive against, never mind beating Kenya’s men’s team in a cricket match.

The team will have Collins Obuya, Ragheb Aga and Tanmay Mishra, players with T20 experience in domestic competitions of the highest level. Collo and Ragheb have featured in England’s main T20 county competitions, whilst Mishra was a member of the now defunct IPL franchise, the Deccan Chargers last season. Aside from them, there is also Maurice Ouma, Hiren Varaiya, Nehemiah Odhiambo and Alex Obanda who featured in Kenya’s only trip to the T20 World Cup in 2007 and there is Rakep Patel and James Ngoche who have exposure in the 50 over version of the World Cup. They now carry the bulk of experience for the national team. They newer lads, Nelson Odhiambo, Lucas Oluoch, Dominic Wesonga, Emmanuel Bundi, and Irfan Karim have all shone in East Africa Cup and Premier League competitions, and for the most part they should be too skilled for the likes of Nigeria and Botswana. It is imperative however, that they bring their A games to be certain of making it out of what could be a tricky stage of qualification and set themselves up to have another go at the global qualifier.

The build up hasn’t been without controversy, with the squad heading out to Uganda just a week after one or two potential players featured in the non sanctioned Zuku Cricket Wars tournament. I’m not saying that these guys were certain to be in the team but one does wonder if being there did factor as a reason to leave them out by Cricket Kenya now or later on. That aside this blogger wants to wish our boys all the best in the qualifiers.

the #harambeestars merry go round

Football kenya federation are looking to hire yet anothher coacj for our harambee Stars national team. this is just two months into the interim reign of James Nandwa, whoo took over After Henry michel walked out after foru? months in charge. Michel replaced Francis Kimanzi, who himself had hardly finished 6 months on the job, after taking over from…err at this point I lose track.

Harambee stars haven’t had a head coach finish a calendar year in charge since 2009? and in the last decade i’m only aware of the phenomenon happening twice more. In all that Time the teams on field results have been in steady decline.

Maybe, just maybe, the problem lies somewhere other than the guy who happens to be head coach at that point in time. after all if you keep giving a patient the same medicine and they aren’t healing then clearly that’s the wrong medicine for the disease in question yes?

Sure a new coach might get us one or two positive results in the short term, but what happens when we eventually lose a game? (yeah teams lose games sometimes) Do we hire a new coash or do we realize that he’s just one wheel in the cog called a national team?

You may have heard about Maasai Cricket Warriors, Now see…about them

Word about is that There’s now a film documentary about our friends in Laikipia, the Maasai Cricket Warriors, and the good they are doing with the sport of cricket on their society in production. The first I heard (rather) about it was a cricinfo article about England’s current lead fast bowler, James Anderson lending a hand to promote awareness about the film project, and by extension the cricket warriors themselves. The guy doing the film has done alot of work around the sport of cricket and has a good reputation for the quality of his work. According to the link at the end of this blog post, there are about 1/3rd the way through filming and are scouring for help in resources the get filming permits etc, and by the way they do need an animator. Follow the link and see how you can help http://igg.me/p/271575

Ati WHAT!

Just been ambling through tip blog’s stats and apparently somebody clicked on it whilst Googling, Harambee Stars assistant coach, James Nandwa’s ethnic identity. For the record, I don’t know and couldn’t really give a damn. Gosh, what’s with the obsession of packing everyone and everything Kenyan into an airtight tribal cocoon?

I’m still impressed with #HarambeeStars

Despite going down to a soft goal, on a bad free kick, to dreaded rivals Uganda Cranes in the last minute of the CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup final, I am impressed with the overall showing that Kenya’s national team put in over the course of the tournament. Having gone out at the group stage, in the previous two events, and without a tournament win since 2002, this showing is a nice change of tune for long suffering fans. They generally operated as a team, overcame most of the adversities thrown up at them and even in the pressure cooker of a penalty shoot out, they had the composure to score all their 4 to knock out a stubborn Zanzibar team. Is it no wonder the man contracted to coach the team to the event, former Tusker Coach James Nandwa, has been made assistant to full time head coach, Henri Michel?

Now its on to the bigger issue of CHAN qualifiers. Kenya face Burundi over two legs, in the first sound of qualifiers. Probably a much softer challenge than Uganda, yet still good enough to take advantage, if Kenya don’t take the the seriously enough. All the best to them.

Who isn’t impressed with #HarambeeStars?

I know I am. Coming off the back of two straight group stage eliminations, and at least 2 coaching changes in the last 2 years, Kenya’s national football team have certainly come together impressively this CECAFA Senior Challenge Cup. Now one step away from winning the title for the 1st time since 2002, it is certainly a massive change of fortunes in a very short time.

They now face a very familiar foe Uganda in a stadium where they haven’t lost to anyone in 8 years. This is the same Uganda team that beat Kenya 1-0 in the opening match, but based on the performances I’ve seen it will not be the same Harambee Stars that walk out onto the field in the final. They bounced back admirably to dispatch South Sudan 2-0, and then Ethiopia, on a nightmare pitch, 3-1, to qualify for the quarterfinals. There they edged out Malawi 1-0, and then came from behind twice (the 2nd time after a really dubious penalty) to edge out Zanzibar on penalties in the semifinals. In doing so they showed a level of resilience that hasn’t often been associated with the Harambee Stars over the past decade. This time around there has been alot of the ‘Harambee’ spirit of pulling together. So far this tournament there has been star quality, with veterans like Mike Baraza, coming strong against Zanzibar, and newcomers like Rama Salim playing with confidence and verve throughout. Save for the ‘loin-soothing’ antics of Paul Were and Kevin Omondi, team discipline and morale are reportedly good.

Uganda, on the other hand, have been imperious. They have won pretty much every hand they have played so far. Over the past 4 or so years they have been the polar opposite of Kenya. Stability, where we’ve had chaos, direction where we’ve been all over the place. Most importantly dominance in the CECAFA Cup where we have struggled to make an impact. No doubt there will be alot of Kenyans making the trip to Namboole, so the good advantage thing might be dulled. Nonetheless Kenya will really be up against it versus Uganda. Not just because it is a cup final, but because it is a local derby with decades of history behind it and this blogger hopes that our boys can come out victorious. Either way it has been a very good showing.

Dear Jackie,

This is an open letter to the newly elected chairperson of Cricket Kenya.

First of all congratulations for coming through as the second ever chairperson of Cricket Kenya and first woman chairperson on a major Kenyan sports governing body. Another glass barrier broken for women in sports and management all over Kenya. Given the drama preceding this final vote, I’m just glad that hurdle and you can get on with 4 years of implementing your programme for cricket in Kenya. Niceties aside there is the very serious business of getting Kenyan cricket out of the funk it is currently in and back on to the path it left several years ago. To achieve this task there are a number of things this cricket mad blogger feels ought to take priority.

Firstly is unity, unity unity! And I’ll put it in two quotes. A house divided against itself cannot stand – Jesus Christ. The principle on which to manage an army is to set up one standard of courage which all must reach – Sun Tzu (The Art of War). For its entire history Cricket Kenya seems to have been dogged by the ghosts of the drama, intrigue and disunity that eventually killed off the Kenya Cricket Association. Players and coaches I’ve talked to brought it up, It’s been repeated in several interviews in the mainstream press. Even the former Chief Executive, Tom Sears was quite happy to lay the blame of his inability to get things done with the old pre-elections board’s bickering. Whatever dog you may or may not have in these fights, the fact is that the people with responsibility expend way too much sweat on them rather than stuff that has real potential to address the bigger problems in Kenyan cricket and that is really quite sad. From an outsider perspective it looks like a family who’s members are willing to burn down their house and sleep in the rain because they can’t agree how to fix a leaking roof. Player strikes, court cases, vanishing accountants etc, alot has come out in the press that just doesn’t make for happy reading. So long as whatever the root cause of this isn’t cured or at least defused, then I fear that a lot of precious time is going to be lost that Kenya really doesn’t have any more and whatever grand plans you have may never materialize.

The second thing is outreach. It amazes me that after being the first sport to embrace de-segregation in the 60s, cricket in Kenya is still somewhat of an infant, compared to likes of soccer, rugby and even hockey, when it comes to the size of its player base. This blogger is aware that Nairobi Province did take cricket to some public high schools in its territory, but that never quite matured into a th kind of of inter-schools competition now flourishing in several other team sports working through the Kenya Secondary Schools Sports Association. Rift Valley, Coast and Nyanza have also had a go, with various programmes of their own, with varying degrees of success. I believe that as overall chair of of Cricket Kenya, your office would do well to provide a unifying theme to all these separate moves that their effect on growing the player base in the game of cricket in Kenya can be amplified. There are also the several cricket academies that former payers are setting up nowadays, Rajab Ali’s being the most recent. They need to be co-opted, but not bullied, into one network with a single set standards, accountability, maybe even resources flowing from your board. I Whilst they are likely doing quite a bit on their own, I feel setting a beacon or standard for them to aim for (see the Sun Tzu quote above) would make them more effective.

Then there is the matter of our national teams. Our senior mens team was undoubtedly the strongest outside the full member, but since 2003 the ground has shifted massively from underneath them, and from the past few rounds of World Cup qualifiers, and Intercontinental Cup matches, they hardly qualify to be a big fish on the continent never mind amongst fellow associates. There’s been alot of drama during that time as well, but rather than go off into who did what who, or did whatever to the other, I’m going to focus on what must happen now. The players need to be insulated from board room politics, plain and simple. You can’t build big batting partnerships, or bowling units that hunt as a pack on the field, when there’s all manner of funny-funny characters spreading funny-funny stories in the camp. Help Collins Obuya and Robin Brown do their their job by giving them final authority on team matters. That way they can get on with bringing home the victories necessary to help you convince the big fish of this world that they are gaining something if they opt to pass through Nairobi on their next Africa tour. The women’s team, and the youth teams, generally need more players brought in and playing the game. Their success is the future of the game.

Finally there is the matter of money. This blogger reckons Cricket Kenya needs to broaden its sources of revenue. This business of putting every egg in the basket called ICC grants isn’t sustainable. Not because the money is small, but because the ICC’s just not structured to encourage its minnows to grow into anything more than a side show for the big players like England, India and Australia where it receives tv and marketing revenues in the billions of dollars. See the several attempts to change World cup qualifying and format because the wrong team got knocked out.

Anyway, my final word is best of luck with the task ahead of you and may you be the best manager that sports in Kenya has ever had.