Against a background of pink gins and turbans, cricket in Kenya is gaining in popularity with all population groups
CRICKET:Neil Manthorp
IT is well known that Africa is a continent as full of contradictions as a pomegranate is of pips, but that does not make the four- nations tournament currently under way in Nairobi any less fascinating.
For instance, on Tuesday South Africa played Sri Lanka at the Nairobi Club, a part of some foreign field that is forever England. In the reading room, week-old Financial Times were scrutinised by retired colonels with handle-bar moustaches, while Kenyan waiters came and went noiselessly with trays filled with pink gins.
On Thursday the South Africans were across town at the Aga Khan Club, a part of some foreign field that is forever India. Here pink gins are not served because it is a Muslim club with a strictly no-alcohol policy and while the handle-bar moustaches are also in evidence, they look a little different surmounted by turbans.
The Nairobi Club is a relic of empire where one expects at any moment to run into David Niven playing the role of Phineas Fogg. There are hunting trophies on the wall, memorials to club members killed in both World Wars and even dormitories modelled scrupulously on a thousand English public schools, for those too drunk to go home.
The Aga Khan Club is shiny and new, less than 10 years old and just across the road from the even more impressive Aga Khan Hospital. It was this hospital where one of the more bizarre incidents of the 1994 International Cricket Council (ICC) Trophy was acted out. United States fast bowler Hopeton Barrett hit Israel’s wicketkeeper on the head with a bouncer, felling the poor man and causing him to be stretchered off.
One suspects that anywhere else in the world the chap would have been left to bleed, but this is Africa and no-one saw anything wrong in having an Israeli stitched up at a Muslim hospital. And anyway, there was cricket involved. He was repaired and returned to the field unharmed.
On Thursday the ground was packed to the rafters with as multiracial a crowd as you are likely to find for a sporting occasion anywhere in Africa. Kenya is a country with a divided past but, at least where cricket is concerned, a united future. Not so long ago its national side was made up of visiting ex-pats and resident Asians, but since the local African population got involved the game has taken a quantum leap. Steve Tikolo and Maurice Odumbe are Gods to all the ethnic groups, not just the indigenous ones.
Kenyan cricket is celebrating its centenary and, in an unusual move, has applied to the ICC for one-day status instead of full Test status. But with big names like Ali Bacher in support, Kenya can look forward to celebrating Test status, something that would have been inconceivable 10 years ago.
Bacher heads the ICC committee charged with expanding the game into the 21st century and Kenya is top of the list for his missionary team.
For the traditionalists who see Test status for Kenya as another dilution of a once great tradition, the future holds many shocks. The ICC has already mooted a kind of world championship of Test cricket; next in line will probably be some kind of second division Test circuit with the likes of Kenya, Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Holland fighting it out to join the big boys in the first division, but enjoying full ICC patronage at the same time.
This tournament is Kenya’s shop window and the three visiting teams have been treated well enough to suggest that the ICC will be pulling into the store sooner rather than later. The hotels have been clean and efficient, so has the transport and the groundstaff have been on their best behaviour.
Ahead of Tuesday’s game Pat Symcox was not ridiculed when he suggested that he may take the field in a helmet due to the rough patches on the outfield. Ironically Symcox fell victim to one of those rough patches, but it was his ankle rather than his head which suffered. And while the surface was far from ideal both sides raised the level of their performance to cope and the only real surprise was that Sri Lanka actually outfielded South Africa.
The pitch was variable in bounce and offered rather too much turn and the fact that only Daryll Cullinan managed to reach 50 suggested something unfit for international cricket. But what emerged was a game full of character and, latterly at least, much excitement.
Sri Lankan skipper Arjuna Ranatunga argued that people come to watch batsmen score runs in one-day cricket, but when runs are hard to come by and the bowling is of the quality served up by Allan Donald and Muttiah Muralitheran the result is a spectacle every bit as compelling as a Mark Waugh century.
That final is most likely to feature a replay of Tuesday’s match with Sri Lanka, hopefully on a more batsman-friendly pitch. South Africa’s fighting qualities showed up admirably in a two-wicket defeat and they will take much resolve from that performance in adversity.
Happily the whispering campaign which accompanied Sri Lanka’s World Cup triumph has been silenced here. Despite antipodean rumblings about the lucky Lankans, Ranatunga’s men have now won 13 one-day internationals in a row on every kind of pitch on grounds all over the world. As the rotund skipper said on Tuesday, it is nice to keep winning but defeat when it inevitably comes will not erase the fact that they are world champions for at least another three years.
And South African coach Bob Woolmer has admitted that it will take a string of victories by his side over Sri Lanka to even dispute the title of best one-day side in the world. But beating the islanders comprehensively on Sunday would be a nice way to start.