Opinion: Kenya looking down the barrel

Kenya A have been thrashed by the full, well sort of, Danish team by 7 wkts.  

In the last 1 year, Kenya U19 lost out in the African qualifiers to both Naimbia and Uganda, Kenya A has just finished their Denmark tour with all defeats excepts for 2 victories, one against a second division side by 3 wickets, the other was more convincing, but against weakest team in the Danish premier league. They were thrashed by both Denmark A and the full Denmark team, but the full Denmark team did not need Klokker, M Pederson, C Pederson. Additionally, Kenya senior team drew with the weakened Zimbabwe side 2-2, when they were expected to win that series, and got thrashed by Bangladesh 4-0, though Bangladesh, though showing a once in a blue moon good performance, is still largely what you would call a weak team.

The reason why the performance of the Kenya A and U19 teams is so important is because their senior team is being carried forward by Tikolo, Otieno, Odoyo, Suji etc. Barriing Odoyo who still has 5 years, the others are pushing it at the momment, and it is difficult to see them continuing beyond the WC 2007.

My question is, why this has happenned in perhaps what should have been the best story to come out of associate countries 10 years ago? Tikolo, Odumbe, Otieno, Odoyo and to some extent even M Suji, were all world class players in their heyday. They could have very easily made the test teams of Zimbabwe or New Zealand at that time. In addition to all that, they ended up being in the World Cup semi final with some brilliant performances against Zimbabwe, Sri lanka, Australia and even the qualifer against India. They were outclassed by India in the semi final, but that should have managed to get 20-30 K people interested in the game, and start playing it at least at the recreation level. It looks like that never happenned. People always talk about infrastructure, but look at Nepal and Afghanistan. They have zero infrastructure, much less than Kenya.They only rely on playing numbers, and the level of street and recreational cricket being very high. Afghanistan players that did so well on the tour to England play on portions of paved roads because they didnt even have a full ground. But Kenya has not been able to get to that level in terms of playing numbers. In fact Kenya is at par with Namibia and Zambia in terms of registered players and about 4 times less than Uganda.

Who should one blame for all this? I understand that the cricket board was a corrupt one that ate up all the money, though it was a lot of money, and if there had been a bit of passion for the game, it would not have been that easy to eat up the money. Secondly, I am sure that FIFA gives Kenya a lot more money than the ICC, then why isnt that sport facing the same problems as cricket in Kenya, regarding corruption? The ICC too has to be blamed. With all these good players, Kenya team was a decent product in the last 10 years. ICC should have given them full tours, at least 5 ODI series against Zim and Bangladesh and at least 3 ODI series against other test teams on a regular basis, at least 20-30 ODI games in a year. That would have made the whole season consistent for the Kenyans, would have enabled them to get sponsorship and also regular intake of players from their other sides. But at the momment, it also seems that that time has been lost, and there is little point in still considering Kenya to be the top associate.