Maurice Odumbe known as finest Kenyan cricketer call it quits

It is over.

Imagine a world where one old gaffe haunts you for the rest of your life, a world where a past slip-up becomes the basis of how you are forever judged, your legendary exploits dead and buried. Without Cricket, what kind of man would Maurice Odumbe have been?

If he were a mason, an architect or a civil engineer, maybe his buildings would still stand tall. If he were a headmaster, his charges would be around and about. If he were a doctor, his patients would remember him kindly. But he became a cricketer - a world-class cricketer – fell from grace to grass, and got forgotten.

ESPN’s Cricinfo describes Odumbe as ‘one of Kenya’s genuinely international-class players, an all-rounder who could hold his own in the side as either an aggressive middle-order batsman or naggingly accurate offspinne.’

Ever since Odumbe made his debut for Kenya in 1990, says the cricket website, he was an automatic choice. He won the Man of the Match award in team Kenya’s sensational victory over West Indies during the 1996 World Cup for his three for 14 in his first senior tournament.

Roll of American dollars

But Odumbe’s world, and his career, came crushing in 2004 when the international Cricket Council (ICC) slapped him with a five-year ban for associating with a known bookmaker. He was 35, at the prime of his life. The celebrated cricketer’s ex wife told the 2004 inquiry that she had collected thousands of dollars from a bookmaker on his behalf.

Katherine Maloney, while giving evidence at a disciplinary inquiry in Nairobi, told the hearing she had been “very unhappy” about Odumbe’s relationship with bookmaker Jagdish Sodha, who she claimed to befit the description of a “gangster”.

According to BBC Sport, she said “Sodha handed me a roll of American dollars. I was uncomfortable and expressed concern about all this money. He said the money was for a pharmaceutical business.”

During the landmark hearing where veteran lawyer the late Ishan Kapila represented Odumbe, anti-Corruption investigator Martin Hawkins described how Odumbe made four trips to meet Sodha in India before the 2003 World Cup.

“Odumbe said he had been introduced to Sodha as someone he could take part in a solar lighting business with when he retired from cricket. Sodha would also provide medicine for his mother, who had hypertension,” said Hawkins.

World never heard my story

But speaking to the Times of India in 2009, Odumbe blamed the ICC for mishandling his case and destroying his career and claimed he suffered just because he knew someone who happened to be a bookie.

“I was accused of knowing somebody, not of match fixing. The world never heard my story. I was not given a chance to prove my innocence. I was accused of knowing the wrong person in an inappropriate context.

“My verdict was read out at night, most of the witnesses were my ex-girl friends. If you look at other cases like Marlon Samuels, Herschelle Gibbs and Nicky Boje, they all escaped with much lesser punishment but I was banned for five years. Why? I’m disappointed. It hurts,” he said

Sadly, Odumbe’s mum would later pass on in 2009 leaving her son a pale shadow of his old self. An emotional Odumbe told The Nairobian he felt like dying when calamities kept coming.

“The larger Odumbe family was at the brink of collapse after the death of my elder brother Ken. My mother was half paralyzed while my other brother Martin was also sick. And here I was struggling with divorce,” says Odumbe, a last born.

“Her death in 2009 destroyed me. I was devastated. Was my family cursed? My father died at 42 and apart from Ken, none of my siblings had lived past the age of 42. I was terrified and I thought that I too wouldn’t live beyond 42,” he recalls.

 “I have left cricket and decided to change professions after waiting for eternity to be involved in Cricket,” he says with a tinge of sadness.

Odumbe had hoped to play for Kenya in the 2011 cricket World Cup, indeed has waited for a call-up to the national team since his ban expired in 2009.

That call never came.

The man who lived big, drove sleek cars and flew around the world and was once revered in India and Pakistan will no longer live in the past.

Armed with a college diploma in travel consultancy, Odumbe begins a new life as Marketing Consultant with Dynamo Digital.

It’s over.

But all those who saw him in action have one thing to say: Thanks for the memories.