Gondaria, Gill Half Centuries not enough for Kenya Versus Jersey

Kenya succumbed to their second consecutive defeat in the final leg of the ICC Challenge League A, falling to Jersey by 123 runs at the Nairobi Gymkhana.

Jersey’s Asa and Zak Tribe were key to their victory over Kenya. (Source: BBC Sport)

Jersey’s victory was built on leg spinner Benjamin Ward’s 5-wicket haul. He accounted for Rakep Patel, Sachin Bhudia, at a time when the Kenyans were still in the game, and Francis Mutua, Shem Ngoche and Peter Langat, to wind up the Kenyan innings, all out for 197

Jersey had won he toss and opted to bat, and they pummelled their way to an imposing Total of 320/7, from their allotted 50 overs. The brothers Asa (72 off 86 balls) and Zak (65 off 67 balls) Tribe provided the backbone of the Jersey innings. For the Kenyans, Sachin Gill was the pick of the bowlers, taking 3 wickets at a cost of 54 runs in 9 overs.

The Kenyan chase began with captain Dhiren Gondaria pillaging a quickfire 55 off 41 deliveries before he was bowled by Tony Britton. Rakep Patel, Irfan Karim and Sachin Bhudia were all dismissed soon after, leaving Kenya’s chase practically dead in the water at 91/5 in the 19th over.

Sukhdeep Singh joined Sachin Gill at the crease, and the two of them were able to put together a 61 run partnership before Sukhdeep lost his wicket for 31. Gill pushed on to a final score of 6o from 61 balls, and when he was dismissed, with Kenya at 194/8, the Kenyan inning essentially died with him.

With the win, Jersey clinched a slot at the Global World Cup Qualifier in Nepal next year, whereas Kenya have two matches to escape the ignominy of a relegation playoff, should they remain among the bottom two teams in this league. They will play Kuwait on the 28th October at Ruaraka, before finishing their against Papua New Guinea on the 31st of October at the same ground.

Kenya Crash and Burn at Ruaraka

In an inexplicable late collapse, Kenya lost by 4 runs to Qatar in their second match of the third leg of the ICC Challenge League A, Cricket World Cup Qualifiers at the Ruaraka Sports Club Ground.

Owais Ahmed’s nerve at the death sparked an inexplicable 4 wicket collapse from team Kenya (Source: Cricket kenya)

Needing 8 runs from 15 deliveries, team Kenya lost the wickets of Francis Mutua, Shem Ngoche, Sukhdeep Singh, Irfan Karim and then Vraj Patel, in a span of less than 2 overs to turn what was meant to be a straightforward win, against the team bottom of the log, into an upset loss.

Kenya had won the toss and elected to field. Oman’s opening batters Zubair Ali and Shahzeb Afridi set about the powerplay with aplomb, carrying Qatar to an 80-run opening partnership in quick time. It was only the introduction of the spin of Shem Ngoche and Rakep Patel that had any impact on slowing down the scoring rate of the Qataris. Together with several soft dismissals. The Qataris eventually ended up with a total of 283 all out, in a game where they should probably have been aiming for a 300-plus total.

Once again, Dhiren Gondaria was dismissed early in the run chase, and it fell to Subham Patel and Irfan Karim to carry the initial stages of the Kenya run chase. Karim built strong partnerships with Subham Patel (55 runs), Rakep Patel (77 runs), and Sachin Gill (47 runs) to put Kenya in the driver’s seat heading into the death overs.

This is where things began to go south. Irfan Karim was forced off the field with an apparent foot injury, with the score at 244/5. Francis Mutua tried to end the game quickly, with a boundary-laden 33 off 16 balls, only to fall chasing one too many boundaries. This brought Shem Ngoche to the crease with the score at 276/6. He lasted just two deliveries before top-edging a catch to the wicketkeeper.

Sukhdeep Singh was the next to go, slashing an Owais Ahmed half-tracker straight to point, which Irfan Karim came back into the game, only to chop on an Owais Ahmed delivery onto his stumps and be dismissed for 86. Vraj Patel was the last man out, spooning his very first delivery to Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, and handing Qatar the surprise result. Owais Ahmed was the chief architect of the collapse finishing with match figures of 6.5-0-33-4.

The result leaves Kenya and Qatar adrift at the bottom of the Challenge League table on 8 points, with three matches each left to play. Kenya next play top-of-the-table Jersey, and the Gymkhana tomorrow morning.

One Down, Four to Go: Kenya vs. Denmark Match Report

Carried by the returning Irfan Karim’s steadfast century on 106, Team Kenya began the campaign to salvage their ICC Cricket World Cup Challenge League Group A campaign with a comprehensive 103-run demolition of Denmark at the Nairobi Gymkhana.

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The game, which is the first of the final leg of matches, in which the top two teams will qualify for the final stage of qualification to the ICC 50-over World Cup, to be co-hosted by South Africa, Namibia and Zimbabwe, saw Kenya reverse the result of the last meeting between the two teams, a 188-run win for the Danes in Jersey.

Kenya won the toss and chose to bat first, and despite losing captain Dhiren Gondaria early, quickly took the initiative with Irfan Karim and Subham Patel taking the game to the Danes with a 72-run partnership to set the tone for the batting.

Subham lost his wicket for 48 runs soon after the first powerplay. With Karim anchoring the innings, Rakep Patel (57 runs off 65 balls faced), and Sachin Gill (49 off 41) were able to accelerate the Kenyan scoring rate to the point that when Shem Ngoche hit the final ball of the innings for six, Kenya had a commanding 324/7 total to defend.

The Danish response saw opening batsmen lay on a solid 85-run partnership. This would have been a solid enough platform to chase Kenya’s big total, if Kenya’s left-arm spinners Shem Ngoche and Vraj Patel hadn’t strangled the Dane’s scoring rate right down to a point that Shem Ngoche had only conceded 8 runs from his first 5 overs, with 2 maidens.

At this point, the scorecard pressure and some excellent catching in the field saw Kenya’s battery of spinners chip away at the Danish line-up, with Shem Ngoche leading the charge with 3/31 of his 10-over allocation. The last Dane to fall was Nicholsa Sonne-Rudd, who spoonfed a full delivery from Francis Mutua to Vraj Patel in the deep.

The win closes the gap between Kenya, in 5th place (8 points) and Denmark (9 points) before Papua New Guinea face Jersey at the Nairobi Gymkhana, and Qatar play Kuwait at the Ruaraka Sports Club tomorrow morning.

FKF Suspends Top Leadership, Alleges Corruption

The Football Kenya Federation National Executive Committee has today issued resolutions demanding its chairman, Hussein Mohammed, Abdullahi Yusuf Ibrahim (nominated member) and Dennis Gicheru (acting secretary general) to step aside from their offices on several grounds, including embezzlement of 42 million Kenya Shillings related to CHAN.

FKF President Hussein Mohammed (Source: Capital FM Sports)

Additionally, they have frozen all FKF accounts where Hussein Mohammed is a signatory and called for the appointment of an independent forensic audit of all of FKF’s operations. The full list of accusations against the three officials is summarised as follows:

• Systematic exclusion of a majority of NEC members from performing their duties per the FKF Constitution
• financial impropriety
• misappropriation of 42 million Kenya Shillings from CHAN Bank accounts
• serious breaches of the Public Procurement and Disposal Act (2015) and the Public Finance Management Act
• Conflict of interest
  
  The Hussein administration came in on a platform of turning around the malaise and mismanagement that had mired his predecessor, Nick Mwendwa’s term. That the same concerns have already dogged this current administration to the point that these senior officials are being asked to step aside is concerning. Earlier this year, the Federation chair had his CEO, Harold Ndege suspended, only for Ndege to contest his ouster in court.
  

McDonald Mariga has to step up and lead the FKF in these challenging times.

Former Kenya and Inter Milan footballer McDonald Mariga will step up into the chairperson position, in an acting capacity, as investigations continue into Mohammed and the other two NEC members asked to step aside. In addition to these challenges, he will have to take over the final stages of ensuring Kenya’s ability to meet its end of the joint responsibility to host the 2027 Africa Cup of Nations.

Bhavesh Gohil it is!

In what was reportedly a landslide election, Bhavesh Gohil has been elected to the Chairmanship of Cricket Kenya. Together with his slate of candidates, Mr Gohil takes over the executive board of Kenya’s cricketing governing board, in a poll that only went ahead at the climax of power struggles between two factions of the outgoing board, in which even the election itself was mired in litigation in the days leading up to it

Bhavesh Gohil elected Cricket Kenya chair after beating Tom Tikolo 38-18 in polls at Ruaraka Sports Club, Nairobi pic.twitter.com/mjqs9ZIOKc

— KTN News (@KTNNewsKE) April 19, 2026

Mr Gohil, a Kenyan businessman and member of the storied Nairobi Gymkhana Club, came to the fore in recent times when he fronted himself as a candidate for Vice-chairperson in a by-election that ultimately was cancelled by the Sports Registrar over the legality of the persons who would have served as the electorate at that time.

Newly elected Cricket Kenya Chairperson Bhavesh Gohil, and newly elected VIce-Chair Pearlyne Omamo (Source: Citizen Digital)

Also elected to the board were Alfred ‘Boi’ Njuguna in the role of treasurer, Damien Omonywa – Director of County Associations, and Charity Wambui as the Director of Women’s Cricket.

In an interview he gave to a local TV station, on the launch of his manifesto, he spoke of prioritising an audit of the finances at Cricket Kenya, though he emphasised that the role of actual punishments, should misconduct arise, was not his but the courts.

He takes over a sports federation with a massive trust deficit with local and international stakeholders, and (according to me) has to engage in some political fighting right from day one if (or when) the forces who tried to stop the poll altogether rush to court to cause even more drama.

In the meantime, he also has to come good on his plans to reimagine player pathways from junior to senior cricket, revive the women’s league and re-establish a Kenya ‘A’ team, and bring in new partners to the game. Should he make progress in these areas, it will go a long way in getting Kenya back into the mix as one the best Associate members in the short term, and possibly re-kindle the remote dreams of eventually progressing to full membership in the ICC, where the real revenues and opportunities lie.

Flurry of Litigation Further Endangers CK Polls,

The lead-up to the election of a new Cricket Kenya Executive Council seems to have run into even more headwinds, as several injunctions and counter-injunctions by competing factions in the incumbent board threaten to derail the entire process.

Former Kenya International and coach David Obuya is among those who have filed suit to stop the election of a new Cricket Kenya Board (Source: Obuya Cricket Academy)

Firstly is an injunction that was granted to a petition filed by former Kenyan International David Obuya and one Juliana Kathure on the 13th of April, in which these petitioners got the Human Rights division of the High Court to issue staying orders on the poll set for the 19th.

On the same day, the ICC recognised faction of the Cricket Kenya board filed a case with the sports dispute tribunal, in which the SDT sanctioned their rival board members, the suspended treasurer, and 19 County Cricket Associations for, essentially failing to honour the arbitration process brokered by the International Cricket Council, and the Government of Kenya (through the Ministry of Sports) the culmination of which would is the election of a fresh Executive board to move the game forward. In this filing, the SDT bars the 19 CCAs and suspends the CK treasurer from engaging in the polls.

In the third court filing that this writer has seen, the SDT provides further directions to the case involving the Cricket Kenya board and its rogue County Associations, requiring that the parties file their documents by the end of today, that the hearing will take place tomorrow morning at 10:00am East African Time.

While all that is going on, Bhavesh Gohil has launched his manifesto for Cricket Kenya, with the support of several coaches and former internationals. The things he commits to: grassroots developments, governance reform, player welfare, infrastructure development, sustainable financial growth and establishment of a high-performance centre, are fantastic things to get at, but as seen with the tenures of Samir Inamdar, Jackie Janmohammed, and Manoj Patel, these things are much easier said than done.

Mystery Surrounds Nairobi and Mombasa as IEP Clears Delegations for Cricket Kenya Poll

The Cricket Kenya Independent Elections Panel has published a list of qualified and disqualified counties, sans Nairobi and Mombasa, in the build-up to the election of the Cricket Kenya Executive board on the 19th of April. The Panel has cleared 19 County Cricket Associations to vote as delegates for the election of a new Cricket Kenya Elections Board, and disqualified 13 other applicant counties, of whom 11 were named.

Robert Bukusi, in his role as Secretary to the IEP, published a list of Counties cleared to contest the Cricket Kenya elections on April 19th (Source:Shujaapride.com)

As reported in the Standard Newspaper, the 19 listed counties were cleared based on registration under the Sports Act, Article 7.1.2 of the Cricket Kenya constitution, evidence of cricketing structures, and a written commitment to comply with the Cricket Kenya Constitution and Sports Act.

Given that these have been the historical heartlands of Cricket in Kenya, it does not bode well for the validity of the elections, or the legitimacy of the board that gets elected, even if they are conducted in full accordance with the letter of the law. That legitimacy with local stakeholders will be important to repairing Cricket Kenya’s standing with the ICC, which has been under scrutiny since a leadership crisis split the incumbent board late last year.

The following counties were cleared to vote: Bungoma, Busia, Embu, Homa Bay, Laikipia, Kajiado, Kakamega, Kiambu, Kilifi, Kirinyaga, Kisii, Kisumu, Kilifi, Makueni, Murang’a, Nakuru, Narok, Nyamira and Vihiga.

The Standard report indicates that there were 13 Counties that applied, and were denied clearance to participate in the poll, naming 11 of them as: Baringo, Bomet, Garissa, Isiolo, Marsabit, Turkana, Kericho, Migori, Samburu, Tana River, and Nandi.

A map of the Counties of Kenya with those approved to take part in the Cricket Kenya Poll in green, and those who applied and failed to qualify highlighted in red

The elephant in the room is the Nairobi and Mombasa County Cricket Associations, who (unless it is an oversight by the Standard Reporter) appear to have ignored, or maybe even boycotted, the electoral process altogether.

Given that these have been the historical heartlands of Cricket in Kenya, it does not bode well for the validity of the elections, or the legitimacy of the board that gets elected, even if they are conducted in full accordance with the letter of the law.

Tikolo, Gohil Headline Candidates Cleared for Cricket Kenya Poll

In a letter dated 1st April, the Ministry-appointed Independent Elections Panel has cleared a slate of candidates to contest the upcoming Cricket Kenya Elections, slated for their AGM in April this year.

Bhavnesh Gohil has been throwing his weight around in cricket circles recently (Source: The Star)

This election could either mark the beginning of the end, or a higher level of the controversies of the Cricket Kenya board that blew up into the open in August of last year. Of the existing incumbent board members, only Director of Women’s cricket, Pearlyne Omamo, is seeking an elective post. She is the only candidate cleared to run for the Vice-Chairperson post and will thus likely sail through. unopposed.

Pearlyne Omamo, an advocate and former Women’s International cricketer, is the only member of the current Cricket Kenya Board cleared for re-election (Source: ADRA Advocates)

Other incumbents, such as Chairperson Manoj Patel, and Director of Development Kennedy Obuya have run into legal troubles regarding the misappropriation of Cricket Kenya funds, while the other board members appear not interested in continuing (at least not through the elective seats)

Headlining the rest of the list of cleared contestants are businessman Bhavnessh Gohil and former Cricket Kenya CEO Tom Tikolo, who have been cleared to contest the Chairperson’s seat. Bhavnesh had earlier sought the Vice-Chairperson seat in an aborted by-election, and has made alot of promises to revive the game in Kenya.

His opponent, Tom Tikolo is the elder brother of former cricket captain and widely acknowledged national sporting hero Steve Tikolo. Tom himself was also a national team player in the early 1990s. Tom’s biggest contribution was serving as the inaugural CEO of Cricket Kenya, serving from 2007 up to 2009, when he stepped down over unaccounted funds related to a youth team tour to the West Indies.

The rest of the cleared candidates are Alfred Njuguna Njoroge and Chidambaran Subramanian who will vie for the treasurer’s position. Damian Omonywa and Vidya Chandrasekhar, contesting the Director of County associations position; and Charity Wambuiand Sarah Kemunto Mayaka who will vie for the Director of women’s cricket position.

The FIFA Series: A Quick Primer

This international break sees Kenya’s Harambee Stars incorporated into a new kind of friendly match, the FIFA series. Our very own Harambee Stars are one of over 50 mens senior teams from across the FIFA confederations, that have been roped into a tournament reminds this writer, of the short-lived UEFA Intertoto Cup.

In this window, our Harambee Stars are in Kigali to play in a 4 team knockout, against hosts Rwanda, European minnows Estonia and the Caribbean Island of Grenada (Rwanda A group per the overall structure of this series). Kenya play Estonia on Friday evening (19:00hrs EAT) for an opportunity to face the winner of the Rwanda v. Grenada on the 30th of March. The losers will face off in a 3rd place playoff on the same day.

Al Arabi’s Michael Olunga is a late squad omission for Kenya in the FIFA series (File Photo)

Going into these games Harambee Stars head coach Benni McCarthy will start to feel the heat if Harambee Stars do not give a good showing. There were signs of life during the East Africa hosted CHAN. Kenya made the quarterfinals, only for that hope to be dashed by a 8-0 thrashing at the hands of Senegal’s Teranga Lions in a friendly match in late 2025.

McCarthy’s squad selection is already facing scrutiny, with the South African coach’s decision to include William Lenkupae, currently unattached, among the selections attracting attention.

Kenya’s opposition on Friday, Estonia have not exactly set the world on fire since the Baltic nation was restored to independence in 1991. They most recently finished 4th in the 5-team UEFA FIFA World Cup qualifying Group, with a record of 1 win (3-2 away to Moldova), a home draw against Moldova, and six defeats against group winners Norway, Italy and Israel.

Coming into the current international break, Estonia is ranked 128th in the FIFA World Rankings, 13 places behind Harambee Stars, thus it would be reasonable to expect that Kenya should beat the Eastern Europeans on Friday, yet any kind of complacency could see Benni McCarthy’s tenure face even more embarrassment.

Come One and All and Support One of Our Own

Hello all,

This post is a call to action for all the motosports fans in Kenya. I have not written much on the motosport scene in Kenya, but for this young man, I will make an exception.

Fifteen-year-old Rufus Njeru Holmes, the rising Kenyan-British racing talent, continues to make his mark on the motorsport scene after an outstanding podium finish in Round 4 of the Central Rotax Max Challenge held this past weekend at Whistling Morans.

Rufus Holmes poses next to his racer (Photo Credit: Sports Beat)

Representing Kenya with pride, Rufus competes in the British Rotax Max Championship, where he’s quickly gaining recognition for his remarkable focus, technical skill, and consistency on the track.

Rufus Holmes (car 94) in action in Athi River Machakos (Photo Credit: Business Now)

Rufus is thankful for the support of Rotax Kenya, its chairman Norris, his mechanic James, and all the racers at the event — who proved to be formidable opponents and made the competition an exciting and memorable one.

Following his latest success, Rufus will host a fundraiser on Saturday, November 1st, at Whistling Moran, bringing together fans, sponsors, and members of the motorsport community to celebrate his progress and raise support for his 2026 racing season.

“Every time I race, I carry Kenya with me,” says Rufus. “It means a lot to come home, meet supporters, and share my journey. The encouragement I get from here keeps me pushing harder.”

The event will offer a chance for motorsport lovers to meet Rufus in person, hear his story, and be part of his journey as he continues to represent Kenya internationally. Funds raised will go towards training, travel, and participation in the upcoming UK and European racing circuits.

⸻

I you are interested in meeting with and even chipping in with support for Rufus’ motoring career, please do come to the the fundraiser event as per the details below:

📍 Venue: Whistling Moran, Nairobi
📅 Date: Saturday, November 1st, 2025
🕖 Time: 8:00am – 3:00pm
🎯 Purpose: Fundraiser to support Rufus Njeru Holmes’s 2026 racing season

If you want to get to know the team supporting this brilliant young man, or make your support for his career more long-term, here are the contact details of his team in Kenya:

📩 RHRacing94@hotmail.com | 📞 0700108029