After years of upheaval and controversy, Kenya’s cricketers, with Englishman Tom Sears at the helm, believe they are slowly turning the corner as they eye next year’s World Cup.
The national team are currently preparing at the Nairobi Gymkhana grounds, ahead of their Intercontinental Cup and one-day series against Afghanistan and the United Arab Emirates next month.
The likes of Peter Githuku and Joesph Onyango are among a group of youngsters hoping to scramble for places in the team which is also preparing for next year’s World Cup in the Asian sub-continent.
Expectations are high within the local cricket circles that Kenya, shock semi-finalists in the 2003 World Cup in South Africa, have put their problems behind them. Since being appointed Cricket Kenya (CK) chief executive three months ago, Sears has initiated big changes in the administrative and management structure of the sport in his bid to restore Kenya’s dented image.
His first major task was to bring cohesiveness among the players, who have been at loggerheads with the national administration over contractual issues and team selections.
The national team lost all their World Cricket League matches in the Netherlands last month, and a home series against two India domestic sides, and are already out of the running in the Intercontinental Cup.
“Kenyan cricket has all the ingredients. If you look at the passion here, in terms of the African and Asian population, if enhanced together, there is great potential,” said Sears, a former Derbyshire chief executive and New Zealand cricket business development manager.
He believes lack of resources has held back the development of Kenyan cricket, which has long relied on external funding from the International Cricket Council, but he is quick to blame the local administration for centralizing the game only in the two major towns of Nairobi and Mombasa.
“We need to empower the provinces to do more,” he said, adding: “CK had been doing things wrongly by centralizing the sport. The most effective way to take the game forward is putting the right structures in all the provinces. It is going to take a while.”
However, of immediate concern for Sears is to ensure the national team becomes competitive again before the World Cup in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
He has invited all the potential players to join the training camp at the Nairobi Gymkhana club, and he is looking to boost the team’s coaching staff by employing a foreign batting specialist to assist national coach Eldine Baptiste. He said they have opened doors to all the players to fight for places in the side before the final team for the World Cup is selected in January.
Former national team captain Steve Tikolo, who is now playing club cricket in Zimbabwe, has been recalled to the side, along with Sussex county club seamer Ragheb Aga and opener Seren Waters, and several members of the U-19 team, which finished second earlier this month in the African qualifiers for next year’s World Cup in Namibia.
“From a previous pool of only 15 to 16 players, we now have 25 to 30 players whom we have put on contracts. How they will carry themselves will depend on their performances between now and end of January 2011,” he said.
Kenya is scheduled to host Afghanistan in three one-day series on Oct. 7, Oct. 9 and Oct. 11, before being involved in an another four-match fixture with the UAE in Mombasa later in the month.
They will also play neighbors Uganda, before embarking on a tour of South Africa and India at the beginning of the year.
Revelations of positive doping tests for nearly two dozen Chinese swimmers that went unpunished sparked an intense flurry of accusations and legal threats between the World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) and the head of the US drug-fighting organization, who has long been one of WADA’s fiercest critics. WADA on Saturday said it was turning to legal counsel to address a statement released by US Anti-Doping Agency (USADA) CEO Travis Tygart, who said WADA and anti-doping authorities in China swept positive tests “under the carpet by failing to fairly and evenly follow the global rules that apply to everyone else in the world.” The
Taiwanese judoka Yang Yung-wei on Saturday won silver in the men’s under-60kg category at the Asian Judo Championships in Hong Kong. Nicknamed the “judo heartthrob” in Taiwan, the Olympic silver-medalist missed out on his first Asian Championships gold when he lost to Japanese judoka Taiki Nakamura in the finals. Yang defeated three opponents on Saturday to reach the final after receiving a bye through the round of 32. He first topped Laotian Soukphaxay Sithisane in the round of 16 with two seoi nage (over-the-shoulder throws), then ousted Indian Vijay Kumar Yadav in the quarter-finals with his signature ude hishigi sankaku gatame (triangular armlock). He
RALLY: It was only the second time the Taiwanese has partnered with Kudermetova, and the match seemed tight until they won seven points in a row to take the last set 10-2 Taiwan’s Chan Hao-ching and Russia’s Veronika Kudermetova on Sunday won the Porsche Tennis Grand Prix women’s doubles final in Stuttgart, Germany. The pair defeated Norway’s Ulrikke Eikeri and Estonia’s Ingrid Neel 4-6, 6-3, 10-2 in a tightly contested match at the WTA 500 tournament. Chan and Kudermetova fell 4-6 in the first set after having their serve broken three times, although they played increasingly well. They fought back in the second set and managed to break their opponents’ serve in the eighth game to triumph 6-3. In the tiebreaker, Chan and Kudermetova took a 3-0 lead before their opponents clawed back two points, but
Taiwanese gymnast Lee Chih-kai failed to secure an Olympic berth in the pommel horse following a second-place finish at the last qualifier in Doha on Friday, a performance that Lee and his coach called “unconvincing.” The Tokyo Olympics silver medalist finished runner-up in the final after scoring 6.6 for degree of difficulty and 8.800 for execution for a combined score of 15.400. That was just 0.100 short of Jordan’s Ahmad Abu Al Soud, who had qualified for the event in Paris before the Apparatus World Cup series in Qatar’s capital. After missing the final rounds in the first two of four qualifier