Kenyan rugby should not go down the cricket way

Kenya's Andrew Amonde and South Africa's Dylan Sage, right, in action during day one of the London Sevens at Twickenham, London, Saturday May 20, 2017. (Paul Harding/PA via AP)

Many years ago, I was a wanted man after I ruffled the muscles of the mafia — the Ngong Road Mafia — by writing the truth.

I was always looking over my shoulder for any suspicious-looking burly man and to make matters worse, there was a lawsuit hanging over my head. My tormentors were Kenya Rugby Union officials, and their lawyers had not only threatened me with a lawsuit, but the union officials had written a long letter to my editors to “set the record straight” yet they did not even know my gender and were referring to me as “she.”

By then, blogs were few and far between, but when I Googled my name and Kenya rugby, I found scores of pieces discrediting my article and discussions between rugby aficionados on schemes and people they should employ to discredit the article and the writer.

After working the phones and visiting the offices of a media monitoring firm for several days, I got the video and audio evidence to prove that my article was factual.

I then decided to curtail my visits to rugby events and started concentrating on cricket, which by then used to draw more crowds leading the chair of rugby union to ask the chair of the cricketing body what he was doing to make cricket so successful considering that both are elite sports.

Kenyan cricket was on a roll and cricket grounds were ever packed. The national team was always winning, at home and away, beating the powerhouses of world cricket, at will.

Sponsors were falling all over themselves to be associated with Kenyan cricket. The players’ morale was high considering that they were treated as professionals. They had contracts and used to get their salaries and allowances promptly.

Cricket body, which had in its ranks Sharad Ghai, the shrewd sports marketer who passed away on Saturday, did not have its thumb on the scale and big cricketing nations were always holding tournaments in Kenya. The national team too was always getting invited to other tournaments.

Then, several things happened, and while Kenya rugby took off, cricket started going on a downward spiral. There were internecine wars in the boardroom and in the dressing room. Kenya started losing matches everywhere, to the weakest teams. Crowds to cricket grounds started dwindling and sponsors started pulling out.

The players’ morale was low, and they were divided along seniority or experience lines. Their contracts were also skewed along those lines. Players did not respect the coach and some felt they were too senior and experienced to be trained by (foreign) coaches they considered inexperienced.

The technical bench was small and was never on the same page and neither were the office and the playing unit. Selection of the team was not based on performance or form. Some clubs’ players were favoured and stakeholders could not agree on anything, including playing grounds.

When it was said that these factors were affecting cricket, the response was denial, yet the writing was on the scoreboards the world over.

You do not have to be a rugby aficionado or a cricket lover to realise that rugby is going down the same path, only that sponsors have not started losing faith.

Since the rugby union learnt from Kenyan cricket, which was the best then, to turn its fortunes around, it can still learn from Kenyan cricket, which is a bad example now, and avoid going into a downward spiral.