Second XI

by Tim Wigmore

  Although the game was played on a Monday, it was a sell-out: supporters were turned away even before the match began. It was quite a sight for the press corps to enjoy in the plush media centre. Along with new stands, the media centre was built in time for the new century: a symbol of Kenya’s advance into the cricketing elite. It had everything a journalist could wish for: even an open bar, thanks to East Africa Breweries’ sponsorship.

  Dry and sweltering, it was a typical Nairobi day in February. But it did not seem as if it would be marked by a Kenyan victory. Although Kennedy Obuya batted with gusto, going down on one knee and smiting Sri Lanka’s opening bowler Chaminda Vaas for six over midwicket en route to 60, Kenya stumbled against Muttiah Muralitharan. He took 4-28 and Kenya reached 210/9. It did not seem like a score likely to test Sri Lanka’s powerful batting line-up, but Kenya retained a quiet confidence. ‘Knowing the ground so well, when we set 210 we knew we could defend it,’ remembered Collins Obuya, Kennedy’s brother and team-mate. ‘The pressure was on the bowlers to step up – as a team we knew what the nation expected from us. We could not settle for anything less than a win.’

  As they reached 71/2, Sri Lanka appeared to be cruising towards victory. While Kenya did not have Muralitharan, they did have a 21-year-old leg-spinner. After Shane Warne was sent home from the World Cup for failing a drugs test, Collins Obuya became the tournament’s leg-spinning star. His bowling would later disintegrate, but for a day he bewitched Sri Lanka. Unusually tall for a spinner, Obuya made up for a lack of prodigious turn by getting the ball to grip and bounce off the surface. He also varied his pace: it was a quicker ball that snared Aravinda de Silva, the only Sri Lankan to look in command. By the time de Silva was dismissed, Sri Lanka had slid to 112/6. They subsided meekly thereafter.

  In ten unchanged overs, Obuya took 5-24. ‘That was magical bowling, to beat the masters at their own game. Everybody knows that Sri Lanka facing spin was bread and butter for them,’ Obuya’s team-mate Maurice Odumbe told me. ‘It was nice to see a young African lad bowling leg spin just like Shane Warne. I don’t think I’ve seen any leg-spinner outside the Test-playing countries bowling like that.’

  Obuya bowled so well that the victory lacked a dramatic denouement. Sri Lanka lost by 53 runs. In front of an official capacity attendance of over 8,000 – though plenty more seemed to be crammed in, including future captain Rakep Patel, who had skipped school – Kenya’s players did a lap of honour at a pace that would not have shamed the nation’s marathon runners. World Cup fever was spreading. ‘During that month and the two months afterwards everybody was talking cricket. If you walked down the street everyone would salute you,’ Tikolo remembered.

  In the aftermath of the victory, Tikolo was asked who his Kenya side would overturn next. The answer came in their very next match. Kenya beat Bangladesh by 32 runs to secure their qualification for the Super Six stage.

  The first recorded match in Kenya took place in Mombasa in 1896, between a local team and the crew of HMS Sparrow. Cricket was strongest in Nairobi, the capital and the heart of the British colonial administration. It thrived in elite private members’ clubs whose members did not even try to maintain the pretense that they wanted to play locals.

  The two highlights of the summer – the Asian XI v European XI fixture which was played from 1933; and the Officials v Settlers fixture, which began in 1910 – reflected this underlying truth. It was only in the 1950s that the running of the game became non-racial although, in practice, this merely meant that those of Asian and European background ran it together rather than in two parallel organisations. ‘Cricket was a non-sport in the black community,’ said Tikolo, who was born in Nairobi in 1971. ‘When we were growing up cricket was a sport for the elites – it was mainly played by the whites and Asians.’

  After Kenya gained independence in 1963, the sport slowly became Africanised. In 1976, Kenneth Odhiambo Odumbe became the first black African to play for Kenya. Four of his brothers would later represent the national team too.

  For black Africans, cricket was not just a sport but an escape route. The Odumbe family was raised on an estate for government employees in Nairobi and lived next to the Sir Ali Muslim Club. Out of curiosity, they started to go and watch matches there, and to play themselves. The Odumbes used a plank of wood as a bat and maize coir as a ball. They used dustbins as wicket and played in between the streets of the estates. They practised on the boundary edge during games, and worked as ball boys.

  The Odumbe brothers got the chance to train and play for the club. Soon, the Sir Ali Muslim Club agreed to pay for their school fees. The story of the Tikolo family, who contributed three players to Kenya, including two captains (Tom and Steve), is almost identical. They also grew up near the Sir Ali Muslim Club, where they watched matches with the Odumbes. The only significant difference was that a benefactor from the Swamibapa Cricket Club spotted the Tikolos, and signed them to play there.

  Asian benefactors helped cricket gain a foothold in Kenya in other ways. During the 1980s, Indian Test players including Sanjay Manjrekar, Kiran More and Sandeep Patil all played for clubs in Nairobi. The significant Kenyan-Asian community attended in considerable numbers; crowds of several thousand were typical. For young Kenyan players, it ensured a high calibre of cricket, the opportunity to learn from Test players, and a decent grounding for international matches.

  ‘The really good Kenyan players suddenly raised their games and were able to compete,’ David Waters, who has been involved in Kenyan cricket for over 30 years including as chairman of selectors, told me. ‘Instead of being overawed by these international stars, we were playing with them week in and week out – and it was that that gave us the springboard to do well in those World Cups. They transformed our game.’

  Collins Obuya is just one case in point. ‘Every time there was a match I would go to the ground and help players carry their kits and I would learn a few things.’ He attributes learning to bowl to working with the former Indian Test bowler Balwinder Singh Sandhu.

  Yet Kenya did not appear in the first five Cricket World Cups and did not even join the ICC until 1981. Before that, Kenya had been absorbed, along with Uganda, Tanzania and Zambia, under the umbrella side East Africa. Kenyan players dominated the side that qualified for the 1975 World Cup, but they had been unceremoniously thrashed in all three games.

  In 1994, Kenya hosted the ICC Trophy, which would decide which three associates would qualify for the newly expanded 12-team World Cup. It was an opportunity the players were too good to miss. A squad dominated by the Tikolo and Odumbe families, who each provided three brothers, won eight consecutive games to qualify, although they then lost to the UAE in the final. It meant that, in 1996, Kenya headed to their first World Cup.

  There, they provided a hint of the mayhem they were to inflict upon the 2003 World Cup. For all except Steve Tikolo, who played for the South African first-class side Border in the winter of 1995/96 – having resigned his courier job to take up the chance – training before the tournament was limited to weekends and evenings after work. When the players requested white balls to train with before the tournament, the board could only afford to give them red balls painted white. During the World Cup, they were paid only a $10 a day allowance.

  This made Kenya’s game against the West Indies all the more remarkable. ‘We were playing against our heroes,’ Steve Tikolo remembered. ‘A month earlier we were just idolising them on TV. You couldn’t believe it that you were actually facing Courtney Walsh, Ian Bishop and Curtly Ambrose.’

  And Tikolo was not to be overawed: he flicked Walsh for six over midwicket, a shot brimming with wristy chutzpah. His 29 was Kenya’s top score. Their 166 did not seem like much of a competitive target. But both Caribbean openers fell to the new ball and Brian Lara nicked his 11th ball behind.

  Still, no one really expected wicketkeeper Tariq Iqbal to claim it: he had already dropped a catch and conceded four byes through his legs. He was a ridiculous sight with his spect
acles, blue headband and permanently furrowed brow after rudimentary blunders. Yet somehow he clung on to the ball between his legs. After Lara was dismissed, the West Indies subsided: all out for 93. It was the last of Iqbal’s three ODIs.

  The day was especially memorable for the captain Maurice Odumbe, who took 3-15 with his off spin. Two years earlier he had asked Lara for his autograph after a Warwickshire game in Swansea, where Odumbe was playing for a club. Lara had declined. Odumbe now went up to him in the changing room after the game and handed him his autograph. ‘I asked for your autograph and you wouldn’t give it. Now I am saying you can have mine.’ Most of Odumbe’s team-mates were more respectful, preferring to have their photographs taken with Lara and the rest of the West Indies side.

  Other international stars would soon become familiar with Kenya too. Although they lacked Test status, leading nations were not reluctant to tour Kenya; a few months after the 1996 World Cup, Pakistan, South Africa and Sri Lanka played against Kenya in a quadrangular ODI tournament in Nairobi. In 1998, the national squad became professional and developed a fixture list that would be the envy of leading associates like Afghanistan and Ireland today. Kenya defeated India in two ODIs.

  For Canada, Namibia and the Netherlands, the other three associate nations at the 2003 World Cup, a chasm existed between the Test sides and their own amateur set-ups. This was not the case for Kenya: while cricket was a minority sport in the country, the top international sides were familiar opponents. This regular exposure underpinned Kenya’s success in 2003. ‘Those matches really helped our games,’ explained Tikolo. ‘The effect showed in how we performed in the World Cup. By 2003 we had become a very good team.’

  At the start of every Cricket World Cup there is a familiar ritual. Journalists who have never seen, or even followed, the game outside Test nations are forced to take an interest. Rather than discuss the teams on their own merit, there is only one issue deemed worthy of debate: whether the associates should be allowed to compete on the world stage at all. It is indicative of the insularity that still afflicts world cricket.

  Despite their steady performances before the 2003 World Cup, which included two victories against India, some still considered Kenya a tedious distraction from the real spectacle of watching the top teams playing against each other. ‘When we got to South Africa, there were questions from journalists about whether we had come to make up the numbers,’ Tikolo remembered. ‘I bluntly told them we were here to compete. That is how confident I was with my players.’

  For all the ebullience of Kenya’s victory over Sri Lanka at Nairobi, the ground hosted an equally significant game three days earlier. It was significant because it did not happen. Owing to security fears, New Zealand refused to play. Kenya were awarded a walkover win and t-shirts were printed mocking New Zealand’s fear before the game against Sri Lanka. Points from the New Zealand ‘victory’ would prove very handy in the Super Six stage as both Test teams Kenya secured points against – New Zealand and Sri Lanka – progressed to the next stage, meaning Kenya carried forward the points gained from these wins.

  Kenya needed to win only one of their three games in the Super Six stage to reach the semi-finals. They gave India a fright in Cape Town but 12 March was the day that Kenya had been waiting for. They faced Zimbabwe, who had not defeated any Test side and only owed their place in the second stage to a walkover against England and a rained-off game against Pakistan. It represented an extraordinary opportunity for Kenya to reach the semi-finals, though Zimbabwe were still justifiable favourites: they had beaten Kenya in all 12 completed ODIs between the sides.

  In Bloemfontein, Kenya ended the sequence in the World Cup – and how. Theirs was a ruthless victory: after an immaculate spell of new-ball bowling from Martin Suji, Zimbabwe were bundled out for 133. Kenya reached their target for the loss of only three wickets – and with 24 overs in hand. They had beaten three Test sides in the World Cup; Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe were all beaten comprehensively. ‘Today is the biggest day in every Kenyan’s life,’ Tikolo asserted after the victory over Zimbabwe.

  Intoxicating as these wins were, the indelible memory of Kenya’s World Cup was their defeat to Australia – and the spellbinding bowling of Aasif Karim.

  Before the 1990 football World Cup, Roger Milla was playing out his career at Réunion when he received a phonecall from Cameroon’s president urging him to come out of international retirement. He went on to score four goals in Cameroon’s run to the World Cup quarter-finals. Karim is perhaps the closest that cricket has ever come to an equivalent.

  After captaining Kenya in their disappointing 1999 World Cup campaign, Karim announced his retirement from cricket. For the previous 19 years he had played for Kenya alongside his business career. He even played for the Kenyan tennis side in the Davis Cup. Into his 40th year, Karim’s time as an international cricketer was four years behind him. Then a few months before the 2003 World Cup the board asked him to return. ‘There was a lot of acrimony and problems to be sorted.’ It proved a harbinger of the strife to come for Kenyan cricket.

  His comeback did not begin well. After a wait of 1,354 days, Karim was selected for Kenya’s World Cup opener against South Africa. His two overs were thrashed for 17. He was unceremoniously dumped.

  Kenya’s progress to the Super Six stage gave Karim the chance to end his career on a more triumphant note. Recalled after a month, his nine overs against Zimbabwe went for only 20 runs. Three days later, he faced Australia in Durban. There is a good case to be made for the Australian side in the 2003 World Cup being the finest in ODI history. They would win all 11 of their games in the tournament. But for 48 glorious deliveries, Karim reduced Australia to a quivering wreck.

  After restricting Kenya to 174/8, Australia were hurtling towards their target. They had reached 109/2 from 15 overs when Karim was handed the ball. Ricky Ponting was on strike. It did not seem like a fair contest, but Karim thought rather differently. ‘With my second ball I saw that there was turn on the wicket and that he was a little bit shaky.’

  A classic left-arm spinner’s delivery gripped and bounced, and kissed the edge of Ponting’s bat. A sharp chance was put down by slip, diving to his left. Karim was not to be deterred. ‘I kept putting the pressure on him and every ball he was struggling.’ With his fifth delivery, Karim bowled a faster arm ball that went straight on. It thudded into Ponting’s back leg before he had time to get his bat down: plumb lbw.

  So began one of the most enchanting spells in the history of the game. After Karim had fizzed a ball sharply into the left-hander Darren Lehmann in his second over, commentator Barry Richards sensed what was about to happen. ‘He’s got a slip in place for the one that goes on with the arm,’ Richards said on air. ‘You bowl one that really turns a lot and surprises the batsman. The next one goes on with the arm, he looks for the turn and nicks it to slip.’

  Richards was wrong. Lehmann didn’t nick Karim’s next ball to slip. He edged it to the wicketkeeper instead, deceived by a delivery straight across him from over the wicket. Three balls later a slower delivery swindled Brad Hogg, who was too early on the ball and got a leading edge back to Karim, who dived to snare the chance with an agility the envy of 39-year-olds the world over. His figures read 2-2-0-3. No more wickets followed but he continued to vary his flight, pace and turn with mastery: after eight overs he had only conceded two runs.

  Kenya were still defeated, by five wickets, but Karim’s performance was established as one of the most remarkable in the history of the World Cup. ‘After the game I must have done at least 50 interviews from CNN to Sky to all the Indian channels. I think any cricketer would dream of my performance against Australia. It came from nowhere. That is something that I treasure every day including today. Whenever it comes up there is a smile.’ So keen is Karim to remember it that he personally uploaded his entire spell on to YouTube. Few better examples of the guile and skill of orthodox spin can exist.

  The World Cup semi-final was billed
as Karim v India. After Kenya’s defeat Karim retired, this time for good. He and his team-mates were greeted by President Kibaki when they returned to Kenya, believing that their opportunity to play Test cricket was imminent. After their semi-final defeat to India, Michael Holding told Tikolo that the ICC had earmarked Kenya as the next Test-playing country.

  The notion was not a new one. In the 1990s, the International Cricket Council belatedly recognised the need for cricket to become a more inclusive sport. South Africa were readmitted to Test cricket while Zimbabwe were granted Test status in 1992. More controversially, Bangladesh were awarded Test status in 2000.

  This justifiably irked Kenya. On playing performance, Kenya would have been more deserving. ‘It was very frustrating,’ Tikolo reflected. ‘Kenya were playing better cricket than Bangladesh.’

  Indeed, after beating Bangladesh in the 2003 World Cup, Kenya had won six of the seven ODIs between the sides. The explanation that one member of the Kenyan board got when they made the case to an ICC official was, ‘You do not have 100 million people.’ It says much about cricket’s attitude to expansionism. Yet the feeling was not that Bangladesh were granted Test status instead of Kenya but that, in time, both sides would have it. After all, when Bangladesh were formally awarded full member status, it was after a unanimous decision from the ICC Annual General Meeting at Lord’s.

  On 17 October 2000, Kenya applied for Test status. Their case was proposed by the West Indies and seconded by Zimbabwe: in theory, Kenya just had to meet ICC criteria and pass inspections before being admitted as a full member.

  Two days earlier, Nairobi hosted the final of the ICC Knockout Trophy. The tournament featured all ten full members as well as the hosts: an indication that Kenya were on the verge of being admitted into cricket’s most exclusive club. ‘The tournament has come and gone, leaving Kenyans with fond memories of a world-class event at their doorstep,’ wrote an editorial in the East African Standard. ‘This was the start of a positing journey, that could see Kenya given much bigger events to host before finally taking her place among Test nations.’