by Tim Wigmore
But the success of the era was built on unstable foundations. For the Kenyan Cricket Association, the 2000 ICC Knockout Trophy and 2003 World Cup were chances to show off the national side to the world – as was needed if Kenya were going to earn Test status. ‘They were showcases,’ reflected the future chairperson of Cricket Kenya, Jackie Janmohamed. ‘It was very, very important for the world to notice us. And therefore everything had been invested in the players.’ Future generations were forgotten. ‘From 1994 to the 2003 World Cup it was the same core of players,’ Karim explained. Fundamentals of the sport, the development of players and the quality of domestic competition ‘became weaker as we became stronger internationally. The repercussions were seen after the 2003 World Cup.’
David Waters, at the time involved in the board of the Kenyan Cricket Association (KCA), urged that 25 per cent of all revenue be explicitly ring-fenced for developing the game. It was the sort of thing that countries planning for the long term would do. And it was completely ignored. ‘We missed out, we missed the boat,’ Odumbe told me. ‘Cricket remained a closed shop, just for a few elitists. If you don’t belong to a club, forget playing cricket.’
‘Unless you have a good structure it’s very difficult to produce quality cricketers on a regular basis,’ Karim reflected. ‘You don’t find them on the street.’ After the World Cup, the KCA were furious with him when he publicly doubted Kenya’s Test aspirations on the basis of their lack of a multi-day domestic structure (though Bangladesh did not have one before being awarded Test status). The problem was not the strength of Kenya’s squad at the start of the century, but the lack of attention placed on developing further generations. ‘We had other cricketers who could have done well but what happens after those cricketers? What would have happened in Test cricket? We’d have been a laughing stock.’
Karim was part of a generation of players accustomed to hard cricket. They had learned the game in Nairobi clubs in the 1980s and 1990s, and had a reliable stream of fixtures, against not only A teams but also full members. This golden age for Kenyan domestic cricket proved fleeting. The growth of satellite television meant that expat cricket fans had no reason to attend matches when they could watch India and Pakistan play on TV.
The increase in the volume of international cricket, along with domestic competitions like the Indian Premier League, has meant players have less time to play in outposts like Kenya: even journeymen Indian and Pakistani first-class players, who were staples of every top club in Nairobi into the new century, are no longer found. And the exponential increase in the earning power of cricketers meant that Kenyan clubs could no longer afford to sign them. The Gymkhana Club Ground and others in Nairobi regularly attracted thousands of paying spectators in the 1980s. They seldom attract more than a few dozen today.
A weak domestic structure was not the only problem for Kenya. After the 2003 World Cup, the ICC brought forward the date when there would be a vote on Kenya’s bid for full membership by a year, to 2005. To help prepare Kenya, the ICC announced that it would give the country’s association an extra $500,000 a year for two years. Sharad Ghai, the former chairman of the KCA, told me that the ICC actually only gave $400,000 a year. ‘I don’t want to say it’s an insult. We were grateful that it did come, but that was nothing. We went on tour to West Indies, and our team went because they said to get Test status we need the exposure. That cost us an arm and a leg. $400,000 might look big in Kenyan standards, but in the real world, $400,000 is nothing.’
According to an ICC source, Kenya ‘did well too fast, and the system wasn’t able to cope, and they hadn’t got the fundamentals to have a sustainable programme moving forward’. Of course, in theory the ICC’s role was to provide Kenya with those fundamentals, but it did not grasp the extent of the challenges involved in establishing cricket in the country. ‘The ICC visited us twice a year, promised the world, handed out a few t-shirts saying “Bringing Cricket to Africa”, made lots of promises about more equipment at schools, and that’s the last you would hear of them,’ Waters reflected. ‘What we needed more than anything was personnel – a person to run development structures in this country. The ICC just paid lip service to supporting Kenyan development.’
After the World Cup, Kenya needed two things: sound administration and regular matches. The KCA ensured they did not receive the first; and the myopia of the Test nations ensured that they did not receive the second. In the 18 months before the 2003 World Cup, Kenya played 18 ODIs, including a tri-series with India and South Africa and another with Australia and Pakistan. It amounted to a solid base, but Kenya needed more to build on the achievements of the World Cup. Instead, they got almost no fixtures.
It seemed as if sides were afraid of losing to them. An intrusive example came in 2005 when a tour was scheduled for Zimbabwe. Kenya hoped that this would feature official ODIs; instead they played against a Zimbabwe A team that was the full side in all but name. Kenya won, but they did not gain the ranking points or prestige of defeating a full member. In 35 months after the World Cup, Kenya played a meagre five ODIs. No wonder that they were thumped twice in the 2004 Champions Trophy.
Through a combination of inertia and impotence, the ICC did nothing to swell Kenya’s fixture list. Request after request was sent for ODIs. Request after request was turned down. ‘Three months down the road everything went quiet,’ Tikolo lamented. All Kenya received was an invitation to play in the Caribbean first-class competition, the Busta Cup, in early 2004.
In any other sport, their rewards for reaching the World Cup semi-finals would have been far greater. After Argentina reached the semi-finals of the 2007 Rugby World Cup, a feat almost as unexpected as Kenya’s 2003 success, the International Rugby Board agreed a series of measures to make sure it would not prove a one-off: Argentina were given more rugby Test matches, given help developing a professional domestic structure, and subsequently included in the prestigious annual Rugby Championship alongside Australia, New Zealand and South Africa. Kenya’s cricketers can only have looked on enviously.
Even if it could have done more, the ICC’s cash handout after the 2003 World Cup still amounted to sums unimaginable in the previous 50 years of the KCA’s existence. Therein lay the problem. ‘When we left Nairobi for South Africa we were told whatever prize money you win, it is for the players,’ Tikolo remembered. ‘In their minds they never believed we would get to the semi-finals! Getting to the semi-finals, the pot of money got bigger. We ended up collecting half a million dollars. There was no way they were going to leave half a million dollars for the team to share.’
Even before 2003, there had been murmurings of corruption in Kenyan cricket. In 2001 Kenya suffered from player strikes, as the side complained about not being paid enough or on time. ‘The administration would probably give 95 per cent to cricket and keep five per cent for themselves, which in itself is not right, but they did well for themselves and the team,’ the journalist Clay Muganda told me. The governance of Kenyan cricket was to deteriorate rapidly after the 2003 World Cup.
Corruption has long been endemic in Kenya: it was ranked 136th out of 177 countries in Transparency International’s Corruption Perceptions Index in 2013. ‘It’s our turn to eat,’ was the author Michela Wrong’s summation of the mentality that different groups manipulate resources for their allies whenever they get the chance.
After 2003 the newfound riches inspired some unsavoury characters to take an interest in running the sport. Corruption became so widespread that Tikolo called it ‘an open secret’. He had several discussions with the sports minister to alert him to what he knew. The disarray of Kenya’s cricketing administration undermined all the team’s sterling performances. ‘Our cricket management let us down big time,’ Tikolo lamented.
‘All of the hard work from 2003 went down the drain. People just wanted to benefit themselves in terms of taking the money that was supposed to be for cricket, developing the game and all that. People turned it into a business where they made money
rather than promoted the game.’
By 2005 the turmoil afflicting all facets of the running of Kenyan cricket had created a system utterly unconducive to elite international sport. The chairman Ghai, who had earlier displayed vision to attract Test teams to Kenya for ODI series and the ICC Knockout in 2000, now became the embodiment of their problems. The KCA became a pariah. He suspended elections, fiddled the constitution and oversaw a regime in which there was no accountability for how money was spent. He allegedly diverted vast chunks of the KCA’s revenue into his own companies and was accused of stealing $3.3m from the KCA, including putting gate receipts into bags to take home.
‘There was nothing of the sort,’ he told me. ‘What corruption? There’s no money in it; even with the new lot, there’s no corruption in cricket.’ He attributed the case against him to ‘a camp that basically wanted to get rid of our administration’ who had resorted to ‘playing politics’.
The Kenyan government took a different view and, although Ghai was never found guilty, the KCA was suspended in 2005. The ICC, who had been convinced that the KCA was corrupt since at least late 2003, followed later in the year, effectively forcing the board of Kenya to be reformed for the national side to continue playing.
Yet greed was not the preserve of the Kenyan administrators alone. In August 2004, Odumbe, who had averaged 42 in the 2003 World Cup, was banned from all cricket for five years for associating with a known bookmaker. He returned to Kenyan club cricket at the age of 40, when his ban expired, and enjoyed tremendous success, but did not play for Kenya again. When I eventually obtained his number I assumed that he would refuse to speak with me.
To my surprise, he was not reticent at all. I found Odumbe courteous, charming and incredibly generous with his time when I called him out of the blue. He also continued to deny any wrongdoing. All he was prepared to admit was that he had a friendship with a man pretending to work in the movie industry who was actually a bookmaker, though the explanation is less convincing given that Odumbe admitted to knowing him for eight years. ‘We were not bosom buddies, it was just once in a while, that “Hi”, “Hi, how are you?”, you know, that sort of thing.
‘I never stole anybody’s money, yet I was given five years,’ he complained. ‘I was banned for inappropriate contact, it was never match-fixing, but they don’t seem to want to get it right. I think match-fixing sounds much sweeter.
‘The only way probably I would have known is if he had approached me, and said, “Look, can you do A for me?” In fact there was a time even when the investigators came talking to me, they asked me the same question, how could you not know that he was a bookmaker? I said “Ah, well it’s not written on his forehead.”’
Odumbe finds enemies everywhere in the case against him. He feels wronged by the ICC; other corruption hearings were chaired by local judges, whereas he had to contend with a judge flown in from overseas. He also feels wronged by his board. ‘If you look around, all over the world, the local boards have always stood by their players. But, in my case, my local board, they left my head on the chopping board. Sometimes, people even wonder, is it a question of colour, or what is it?’
And he feels wronged by past girlfriends. ‘If you look at the witnesses that they brought in my case, 99 per cent of them were former girlfriends, so obviously they had a bone to pick with me.’
Not unreasonably, Odumbe also feels his punishment was harsh in comparison with that received by some more high-profile cricketers. ‘If you look at Shane Warne and Mark Waugh, they accepted giving information to a bookmaker, and what happened to them? It was just a slap on the wrist. In my case it was inappropriate contact – just being friends with somebody who is a bookmaker.’
He is still desperate to clear his name, hoping that he may yet be involved in the running of the game in Kenya. ‘The only wrong I did is befriending the gentleman. When it comes to the integrity of the sport I think I gave it my best, I gave it my all, and the good thing is, I sleep easy knowing that whatever happened to me, I was wrongly accused, I was wrongly sentenced, without any mercy, without any chance of an appeal. And it would be prudent for me to still pursue this matter to its logical conclusion.’
No other Kenyan was ever found guilty of corruption, but Odumbe asserted that this is no proof of innocence. ‘I’ve heard rumours and I know for a fact that the investigators were down here to talk to a few players.’ Other players I talked to hold a similar view. Karim believed, ‘There was greed among the players. I always used to explain to them that don’t run after success because when you are successful money follows you.’ He blamed greed on the side’s ‘lack of education’.
At the start of 2006, the KCA was disbanded for good. By this point it was an organisation with no assets and a considerable overdraft, and was not even running a national competition. The legacy of this turmoil is still felt today. ‘Cricket has become a tainted game because of the corruption of the previous regime,’ Tikolo reflected.
In 2006, Cricket Kenya took over the running of the game. The logic behind this was irrefutable: so tarred was the KCA with corruption and chronic mismanagement that the game could not advance otherwise. But this rebirth did not lead to an upturn in fortunes. Off the pitch, allegations of financial impropriety remained: Tom Tikolo, the older brother of Steve, resigned as chief executive in 2009 after claiming an allowance of $10,000 in cash which was left unaccounted for.
On the field, the national team continued to get worse. Kenya performed poorly in the 2007 World Cup and, in 2011, lost all six matches – including a comprehensive defeat to Canada. A new nadir arrived in 2013/14. First, the side finished tenth in the World Twenty20 qualifiers. And in January 2014, Kenya missed out on the World Cup – and lost their coveted ODI status. To skipper Rakep Patel, it was ‘heartbreaking’. He lamented, ‘It’s the only big stage we get every four years as we rarely play against the big teams.’
The tournament brought home just how far the side had fallen since 2003. ‘Kenyan cricket has gone backwards,’ Tikolo admitted. ‘When you look at the quality of players we have used in the last four or five years a number of them are not up to the standards of international level, simply because we never had development programmes nurturing youngsters coming through. The blame should not be on the players – they did not get the proper coaching.’
The upshot of the lack of development is that the side continued to be over-dependent on the class of 2003, even as they aged and declined: seven members of the 2003 World Cup semi-final team were already in their 30s. Waters, chairman of selectors from 2005 to 2007, reflected, ‘When I was chairman I barely needed to call a meeting. No one was pushing for a place in the team – the players picked themselves.’
It may be even worse today. ‘You’re picking players on the basis of their performances in the league – but the league is not even competitive. The structure is not strong,’ asserted Tanmay Mishra, who played in the 2007 and 2011 World Cups. Attempts were made to address this through the creation of the East Africa Premier League in 2011, featuring four Kenyan teams and two from Uganda. After three years the idea stalled, with a feeling that too many substandard players were playing, diluting the competition’s quality.
Perhaps even more damning than the loss of ODI status in New Zealand in January 2014 was the presence of Steve Tikolo. At the age of 42 he made a comeback, a more rotund and slovenly figure than when he top-scored with 65 in Kenya’s first ODI, against India at the 1996 World Cup. For almost a decade he was considered the finest cricketer outside the Test world: a batsman fusing grit with a little of the flair of Tikolo’s batting hero Viv Richards, and a very serviceable off-spinner to boot. He is the leading run-scorer in the Intercontinental Cup, the multi-day format created in 2004 as part of Bob Woolmer’s vision to prepare associates for Test cricket, with 1,918 runs at 64.
But Tikolo was more than just an associate titan: he hit 90s at better than a-run-a-ball against Sri Lanka and the West Indies, as well as ODI centuries against Bangl
adesh and Zimbabwe. ‘Had he been born in Jamaica, with good coaching and fitness discipline he really could have been something special,’ the journalist Martin Williamson said.
‘It was humbling that I could perform the way I did against the bigger teams,’ Tikolo reflected. ‘I used to work a lot at the gym and those were the fruits of working hard.’ Too few younger players shared Tikolo’s voracious appetite for self-improvement. ‘I remember as a kid watching Ravindu Shah [the former opening batsman] or Steve Tikolo,’ one recent player told me. ‘After national team training they used to spend another hour and a half just to come and groom the young kids. The intensity at that time was worthy of admiring – but now it’s fallen off massively.’
When Tikolo returned, he was still among Kenya’s best players. It was testament not only to his talent and desire but also Kenya’s complete failure to replace the 2003 team. ‘There was a sensationally good isolated pocket of players produced at the same time that managed to get them where they got to,’ an ICC source reflected. ‘The underlying system wasn’t there, and to a large extent still isn’t there.’
Signs of hope are hard to find. Kenya have not merely endured a ‘lost decade’ but 12 years in which all facets of the country’s cricket have collapsed. ‘The cricket fraternity missed an opportunity to take cricket to the next level,’ Tikolo lamented. ‘I wish they had used 2003 to take cricket to the next level and all over the country.’ Still, at least the desolate state of the national side means that there is no room for disputing that long-term development must be prioritised, regardless of the immediate pain that will follow.