Interim cricket body will fail unless there is change of attitude

Kenya's Team cricket ponder next move during quadrangular international cricket match tournament against Qatar. [PHOTO: JONAH ONYANGO/STANDARD]

This is an appropriate week to write about the Commonwealth Games, but I will write about Kenyan cricket instead and how it is destined to keep failing.

As a matter of fact it is the best time to write how Kenya’s tourism entities which are big on talking about selling, marketing, branding, or doing whatever that can improve tourist numbers failed to dress–up the athletes during the opening ceremony.

Kenya’s neighbours, who are considered lowly when it comes to winning medals, dressed for the occasion, probably because they are aware that you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

It is very easy to say that Club Games is not a fashion show, and you can commit all crimes of fashion as long as you win medals, but I would have thought that this is a global event and every bit of presentation should count.

Wags will argue that Kenyan authorities failure to prepare Kenyan athletes’ dress sense speaks volumes about Kenyan authorities attitude towards sports in general, and athletes — in the wider sense of the word — in particular even though they never waste an opportunity to talk big and promise galaxies then fail to deliver even the nearest of the stars.

Every Government official in the sports ministry is adept at giving promises but things never change.

Dissolved cricket board

True to form, the new Sports CS has started talking tough. He has made some promises and has even dissolved the Cricket Kenya board and appointed an interim committee. Cricket used to be a sport but nowadays it is just a word. Meaningless word and Kenyans know more about a lawn bowls team they do about a cricket team.

For several weeks, there has been gnashing of teeth over the performance of the Kenya’s cricket team at the Under 20 Cricket World Cup in New Zealand and that of the national men’s team in the World Cup pre-qualifiers in Namibia.

Both the young and the older men performed dismally, and to make matters worse, Kenya, which had already lost the One Day International status went to a lower division, and our chances of rising to an upper division, and eventually to an ODI status can only get dimmer.

To say that the Kenyan cricket scene is in a total disarray is an understatement. It is worse and it boils down to one thing: Attitude. Rotten attitude and a stinking work ethic whereby people are no longer interested in playing cricket but are happy in blaming one another. It is no longer cricket. It is a blame game.

Stinking work ethic

And do not be lied to that this mess started when Kenya lost the ODI status a few years ago, or when Division 3 came calling a few weeks back. It started ages ago. And it has been a downward spiral all through while stakeholders engage in blame game.

They will talk about lack of funds, but when some of us suggested that they should atleast sell replica kits, with the proceeds going to the federation, or the teams, we were laughed out of the playing fields. So, we found it easier to buy replica jerseys of other teams, Pakistan for instance, than to acquire replica jerseys of Kenya.

And so it has come to pass that the new CS for Sports appointed an interim committee to oversee certain aspects of the game including elections. Such an action is not new. It has been done before, and very many changes were effected including changing the name of the cricketing body to the current Cricket Kenya. Elections were held and a new chairman and a new board came on board. They did their time, and then another one came on board. They promised change. Overpromised, and of course, under delivered because on the Kenyan crease, people love living in the past.

They all talk about Kenya’s lost glory and how to bring it back. They all talk about the previous office and how it failed. They forget to change their attitude. Bad attitude. Rotten attitude and a stinking work ethic.

When they are not talking about the past, they talk about themselves. And how they were messed up by the previous office; how things would have been better if the previous office had not messed their lives up.

Ideally, what is killing Kenyan cricket is rotten attitude and a stinking work ethic. Scratch that. What has killed cricket in Kenya, and what will continue killing cricket in Kenya is attitude — rotten attitude and a stinking work ethic.

I can bet all my Pakistan cricket jerseys that this interim committee will not get Kenyan cricket out of a sticky wicket unless they change their collective attitude. And that is a tall order.