Kenyan Cricket is Imploding

[Aislabie]

Kenyan cricket is imploding. There are no two ways about it, the country that was widely tipped for test status after climbing to the semi-final of the 2003 cricket world cup now looks set to tumble down the ladder in an unprecedented slump. In the 2011 world cup, the Kenyans failed to win a single match and were comprehensively mauled by almost everyone. Then followed the African Twenty20 qualifier.

Kenya failed even to reach the global qualifier after losing both of their matches against Namibia, Uganda and Nigeria. This put them in a position of being the sixth best side in Africa, quite a tumble from the team that was so recently in the final four of the World Cup.

Collins Obuya is standing firm, but appears to be the only resistance offered by the Kenyans.​

Now, Kenya have crumbled to a loss in their T20 series against what can only be described as a second-string Namibia squad. With two games to play, Kenya are 3-0 down already to a weaker Namibian team than the one that lost 4-1 to Scotland barely a month ago. On top of this, Kenya have had to recall long since discarded players like Ragheb Aga to cover their bases after the mass sackings undertaken by the board.

With the future looking bleak, there may be just a faint glimmer of hope; the new East African competitions seem to have been successful, but unless the younger Kenyans can get some experience of any real quality, they will never develop into the players Kenya desperately needs to lift its self out of this mess. Maybe that quality cricket could be found by sending a representative team to play in the Zimbabwean structure? Certainly, a similar move from Namibia after their dismal 2003 World Cup managed to rejuvenate a country that threatened to do exactly what Kenya are in the process of doing:

Imploding.​

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

make the wickets 2200 yards apart instead of 22 and they would soon be demolishing everyone.

 

[Owzat]

It is a shame, a restructure of the "Test championship" to include tiers and therefore more Test sides would avoid sides peaking and then troughing bigtime.

Nothing lasts forever, and while much is made of 2003 weren't they beneficiaries of a lot of politics and forfeits :

Kenya 2003 World Cup

GP vs SAF : lost by 10 wickets
GP vs CAN : won by 4 wickets
GP vs NZE : won by forfeit
GP vs SRI : won by 53 runs
GP vs BAN : won by 32 runs
GP vs WIN : lost by 142 runs

So they reached the super sixes by beating ONE decent side in a game of cricket, beating Bangladesh because they're cr ap and New Zealand because the kiwis didn't turn up!

S6 vs IND : lost by 6 wickets
S6 vs ZIM : won by 7 wickets
S6 vs AUS : lost by 5 wickets

SF vs IND : lost by 91 runs

So they got beaten by FIVE Test nations, beat Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the only real scalp was Sri Lanka. Fantastic story of the underdog on face value, but when you look a little deeper it was only one fantastic win and two good wins that got them that far. Would Zimbabwe have got to the super six but for England not playing and a no result vs Pakistan?

Interesting that wiki cites Kenya's match against New Zealand as "forfeit", but Zimbabwe's result against England as "walkover"............... both not played due to safety concerns.

Kenya's win over Sri Lanka, the crunch, was a low scorer. Kenya scored 210/9 with Otieno scoring 60 and three chip-in 20s. From 1/1, 45/2 and 112/4 it was a good effort. Chaminda Vaas took 3/41 and Murali 4/28. Sri Lanka lost wickets regularly with a highest partnership of just 32 in their 157 total. Aravinda De Silva top scored with 41, supported by three chip-in 20s. Collins Obuya did the main damage with 5/24, knocking over the middle order of Tillekeratne, De Silva, Jayawardene and Sangakarra with Vaas his other wicket - one of the more authentic 5wi hauls with no rabbits. Perhaps a fine example of underestimating a dangerous opponent and another scalp for Kenya.



It is time the ICC woke up, made cricket truly global and rang in the changes. Africa should have more black representation, Europe should have more representation and so too should north and south america. With only minor competitions and qualifying available to the rest of the world how are they ever going to generate interest in this great sport? Occaisional appearances at World Cups won't boost the profile, the recent rugby World Cup reminded me a lot of cricket with lots of mismatches and no real competitions for sides to build on.

Cricket is a 'good' example of selfishness of people wanting to maintain the status quo for fear change might mean they get less money. So what if England vs Kenya didn't generate as much interest or money as England vs Australia, it shows the priorities and is akin to if you said you didn't want to have Liverpool vs Stoke, you only wanted Liverpool vs Man Utd so formed a breakaway league of only elite teams.

 

[StinkyBoHoon]

Cricket is a 'good' example of selfishness of people wanting to maintain the status quo for fear change might mean they get less money. So what if England vs Kenya didn't generate as much interest or money as England vs Australia, it shows the priorities and is akin to if you said you didn't want to have Liverpool vs Stoke, you only wanted Liverpool vs Man Utd so formed a breakaway league of only elite teams.

it's not the same. in a kenya v england match, the TV rights for that series are sold and split between those two. in a Liverpool v Stoke match, the rights are split between these two and the rest of the league, and for all other matches.

Make no mistake, even though football is still making bundles of money as money pours in via the asian market that is only interested in man u, liverpool, chelsea and the like, those teams will begin to question why they should share their status with the smaller teams and start eyeing the potential for break away leagues. Liverpool have already stated they want to sell their TV rights seperately, if they did you'd begin to see huge financial disparity.

I can see football going like cricket with an extended CL (which is by invitation and is mainly spanish, italian and english teams), man u, barcelona, madrid, juventus etc all having huge 50 men squads and using a trimmed down domestic league as no more than a training run.

 

[VC the slogger]

Kenya Cricket Board takes bad decisions regularly and are corrupt.They don't make an effort to improve the domestic structure and set up international tours against test playing nations.The players are not experienced in international level.The teams they play these days are Scotland,Canada, and even more lower ranked nations.They need to play matches regularly against the top 9 teams to gain international experience.They have very talented players like Collins Obuya,Tanmay Mishra etc but do not manage them properly.The coaching system is also poor.If these problems are resolved then Kenya will surely rise in the world rankings and if they perform consistently,they might even become a test playing nation.

 

[icyman]

Kenya Cricket too is liable for blame. They should have organized more matches for their side. Kenya could have hosted an annual triangular/quadrangular tournament. They had the facilities and teams would have turned up especially after Sharjah fell out of contention. Kenya Cricket needed to have actively engaged with other boards to improvise themselves,which sadly did not happen.