Kenyan cricket officials to review poor performance
24/9/2008 17:48
Kenya's cricket officials said they will hold a meeting to discuss the
poor performance of the team against the Pakistan Academy in both Nairobi and
Mombasa.
Kenya's cricketers, already under fire after a dismal tour of
Europe, are facing criticism after a virtual full-strength side was destroyed by
a Pakistan Academy XI, losing by an innings and 82 runs at Mombasa Sports
Club.
It was not so much the margin of defeat as the manner of it that will
dismay locals. While Kenya did make a decent fist of their second innings,
scoring 374, their bowlers were quite dismal as Pakistan Academy rampaged to 665
for 2, with Fawad Alam and Raheel Majeed both thumping triple hundreds. The pair
added an unbeaten 611 for the third wicket.
"The team is capable of doing
better. They will tell us what has gone wrong," Cricket Kenya (CK) chairman,
Samir Inamdar said.
Sports pundits say the sooner CK finds out what is ailing
the team the better, as the World Cup qualifier is just around the corner and
this time round only four teams will get tickets for the 2011 event to be
jointly hosted by India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh.
Inamdar said top
associate teams to enjoy one day international status for the next four years
and increased funding from ICC will also be known in April.
Inamdar said that
ICC will meet next month to agree on the venue for the qualifier. It had been
set for Dubai but the facilities will not be ready in time. Bangladesh has been
suggested as one of the venues suitable to host the qualifiers.
Kenya play
the first one day game against the tourists at the Mombasa Sports Club today
before coming back to Nairobi where they will take part in two more one day
matches at the Nairobi Gymkhana on Saturday and Sunday.
Skipper Steve Tikolo
has been very consistent with both the bat and the ball. He has hit centuries in
Nairobi and Mombasa but lacked support.
In Mombasa where the team lost by an
innings and 82 runs, Morris Ouma had a brilliant performance in Kenya's second
innings.
He knocked a century (123 off 166 balls with 18 fours and a towering
six) but he was dismissed cheaply in the first innings when Junaid Khan clean
bowled him for five. Khan was the highest wicket 55.
Kenya's squad has been
losing players at a very high rate. As the game was going on at the Nairobi
Gymkhana, Collins Obuya, was watching it from the sidelines with a knee
injury.
He injured his knee when Kenya played the Netherlands during the
International Cricket Council Twenty 20 World Cup qualifier in Belfast,Ireland,
on Aug. 2. Obuya yesterday said that although he returned home 10 days later he
was not attended to as fast as he had expected.
Faced with a first-innings
deficit of 456, Kenya lost both openers cheaply, but fifties from Steve Tikolo
and Thomas Odoyo and a hundred from under-fire Maurice Ouma helped them salvage
a shred of respectability.
The two sides now meet in a three-match one-day
series, with the Pakistanis, who have won all their matches in Zimbabwe and
Kenya, odds-on favourites to complete a clean sweep.
Xinhua
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