K-E-N-Y-A...Kenya! © Will Luke

Were it not for the balmy conditions, I could just as well be watching two counties in England in early April - not a one-day international in Nairobi in January. Crowd attendance for the World Cricket League so far has been skimpy, at best; there were 22 certifiable spectators yesterday at the Gymkhana. I counted each one. Today, though, it is positively heaving with close to 50.

It’s a relief. The only noise during the matches so far has roared from the throaty disgust of team coaches, and us enthusiastic anoraks in the press box. Roger Harper has been particularly vocal, using the breezeblock walls of the Jaffreys club as a makeshift (and very effective) megaphone for the opening match of the tournament.

Few locals have been too bothered with it and, from some quarters, there have been mumblings of discontent that the matches haven’t been well publicised. One fervent Scotland fan, travelling with his wife, told me he only knew of the whereabouts of the opening game 12 hours before it started. Incidentally, this was moved forward 24 hours due to a religious holiday, but it’s a shame Cricket Kenya haven’t utilised the local media as best they might.

The local news last night incorrectly advertised today’s game, Kenya’s match against Netherlands, before correcting their mistake a couple of minutes later. Not a major problem, but it’s unnecessarily sloppy. Yesterday’s superb game here between Scotland and Ireland was as good as it gets yet it was watched by next to no one.

Today’s gaggle of schoolchildren – screaming K-E-N-Y-A....Kenya! – makes a welcome change. Let’s hope they stick around for the future, too.

	Scene of the crime © Will Luke

After Scotland’s thrilling last-ball shocker over Ireland this afternoon, I left the picturesque Nairobi Gymkhana in buoyant, chirpy, looking-forward-to-a-beer mood. It was a swelteringly hot day, compounded by the greenhouse of a press box we were caged in (although, it must be said, the view from it was magnificent – and a damn sight better than many Test grounds in England), and libation was needed.

After nearly half-an-hour Joseph, my cabbie, arrived in his Toyota banger. His wreck has just one redeeming feature: you can hear it rattle from about 1km, giving you just enough time to rise from your seat and flag him down in case the brakes aren’t working. Off we set, out of the Gymkhana and down the slip-road onto the main highway, but were abruptly stopped by a 4x4 in front of us who had been halted by a policeman.

A tall, furious man, spitting venom, he marched the driver through the traffic to another policeman – and then set his eyes on us. By this point, Joseph was getting decidedly edgy, but my classic, foolish Englishness kicked in. Clearly he’s just having a bad day. He is a policeman after all – there to protect the public and uphold the law.

	Seen it all before © Will Luke

No sooner had he slammed his fist on the bonnet and screamed blue murder at Joseph, than he thrust his hand through the small gap in the window and ripped out the car keys, demanding the driver handed over his licence. So he did, and he too was marched down the street.

Muggins was left in the car, with a laptop and various other worryingly expensive treats, while every Nairobian glared at the useless Toyota, and stupid Englishman, blocking their path. After 15 minutes Joseph returned, keyless, and it was another 10 before the keys had been prised from the traffic tyrant.

As we drove off, in a state of near euphoria, we saw the same policeman stop a large truck, step to the passenger’s door and fling out two passengers onto the road. Just another hazard in downtown Nairobi ...

I like Kenya. The locals might be frustrated by the chaos but, for someone like me, from London – such a regimented city, more intent on watching us, not helping us – the ramshackle way of Nairobi suits me just fine.

“Look, Will,” says David, a man nearly the same height as a Nairobi skyscraper, a scorer for Cricinfo. “We’re going to cross the road here, right in front of this police car. He won’t care. Nobody cares!” So we did, and the packed police car, which had clearly been in more scrapes than was healthy, let us go. This was Nairobi’s main trunk road into the city and we parted the traffic like Moses.

“This is Africa. This is what happens. The police don’t care,” he said, gesticulating with his arms at the police on his right. “You could just as well be arrested for doing nothing as you could for killing someone.” Now, hang on. I know Nairobi is a dangerous place but surely it’s no worse than anywhere else? “It’s all Somalia’s fault. You can get a gun for 6000 shillings (about £40UKP). What sort of a country lets people buy guns so cheap?”

I had no answer. £40 for a gun? That doesn’t even cover my mobile phone bill each month. If I sacrificed my phone I could afford an entire armoury. Gun crime in Britain, in London especially, has risen exponentially in the past decade but the vast majority of people are concerned observers rather than victims.

I’d encountered guns earlier in the day, albeit holstered by a soldier outside the Israeli Embassy. Perfectly reasonable. But even inside an office building late this afternoon, an armed soldier, with a gun far too big for comfort, entered on the 7th floor. It was a stark reminder of the tensions which engulf this city.

I asked David whether he would like a beer on Thursday at the Pavement Club, owned by Shai – a man who knows everyone, even if they’re not totally sure if they know him – but he declined. “I don’t go out. Never. I hate it.” Because of the fear of mugging? “Because I’m low-tier. I’m at right at the bottom. If I go out, I can’t afford to stay long; there are no matutu in the early mornings so I would have to leave early.

“The gap between rich and poor is massive, it’s crazy. Some people can’t even afford to eat. Some rich people earn enough in one day to pay for a poor man’s food for a year.”

	Bermuda were haphazard with their batting ... not that the outside world knew © Will Luke

The conditions were perfect. A cooling breeze took the edge off a sultry day at Jaffrey's Sports Club, the pitch was firm and the players raring to go. Sadly, the opening match of the World Cricket League was an administrative cock-up.

The match itself went smoothly, bar a couple of injuries. Kenya were too controlled with their bowling, Bermuda too haphazard with their batting and a meek total of 133 was never likely to trouble Kenya who romped home with a whopping 31.5 overs to spare, and all their wickets in hand.

But an hour after play had begun there was the very real possibility that the developments on the pitch might not make it out into the public domain. Nervous scribes frantically hunted for a spare donkey, carrier pigeon, pen and paper – anything to replace the equipment provided by Popote, one of the sponsors of the tournament and the official provider of telecommunications for the media.

Two hours into the match their technical gurus, for want of a better word, decided to turn up. Some were lucky with their connections, others less so. And by the time Kenya were batting, some were still internetless. For the modern journalist, this is tantamount to a restraining order, not to mention wholly damaging for the reputations of the companies they represent.

Furthermore, and most damaging of all, we were unable to cover the match to the best of our abilities; we were unable to promote the match, and tell the world that Kenya were hosting such an important tournament.

It almost, but not quite, makes a mockery of the joyous opening ceremony staged last night at Parklands. Kenya was on the up. Life was good. All eyes would be on them for the next two weeks, so let's all have some more beer and get dancing.

What a shame for them that the media have been handicapped from the start.

	The Nairobi Club: home for two weeks © Cricinfo Ltd

“Karibu!” beamed Michael at the Nairobi Club, my halls of residence for the next two weeks. Not knowing what it meant or how to respond, but keen not to appear rude, my only response was “ah! Yes, indeed!”, hiding my embarrassing ignorance behind a dumb, bumbling veneer of Englishness. “Karibu. It means welcome,” explained Daniel, the bubbling cabbie. Jolly foreigners...

In the taxi, when Daniel cheerily announced we had arrived at the Club, I was in two minds. The walls outside were steep and stained. Fortress-like from the outside, it oozed Victorian England on the inside. If anything, it reminded me of an English school; dark, looming wood panels on the walls, on the floor, and a large oak table in the “informal” dining room. Hopefully the food won’t consist solely on a variant of cabbage and spludge (the only word to describe that school staple, concrete porridge).

Revealingly, there were posters advertising the World Cricket League dotted around our journey to the Club - interspersed with mobile phone companies demanding our money and, bizarrely, a large mural of Tower Bridge in London.

After a long build up, things were really on the move today with two press conferences at the Nairobi Hilton this afternoon and a terrific opening ceremony at Parklands Sports Club in the evening. Cultural dancers were promised (for the opening ceremony, I hasten to add), and even managed to lure some of the Scotland and Bermudan players onto the dance floor. It wasn’t pretty, but it was very entertaining. Simon Cowell would’ve thrown a hissy fit.

	A trio of commemorative cakes - the profiterole mountain is for Justin Langer © Andrew Miller

In the otherwise venerable SCG museum, there is one hideously mawkish souvenir - a commemorative red hankie, one of several thousand handed out by the Sydney Daily Telegraph on the occasion of Steve Waugh's retirement in January 2004. So the legend goes, Waugh never took the field without his lucky red snot-rag, and the paper rightly thought that such an item would come in handy for the 40,000 people bidding farewell to their hero.

For if there is one thing that the Australians do better than cricket, it is sentimentality. For instance, it is now 23 years since Greg Chappell, Dennis Lillee and Rod Marsh all bowed out in the same Sydney Test against Pakistan, and we still haven't heard the end of it. Mind you, this match might just do what 2005 did for 1981 and bump that one down the list a notch or two.

Only one day in, and the game is already dripping with nostalgia. It all started yesterday afternoon, with the painting on the outfield of the sponsor's logos. Beneath the great big "3" of 3 Mobile, there are the text-speak motifs: "Thx Glenn" at the Paddington End and "Thx Shane" at the Randwick End (though Shane's contribution to the text-message industry surely deserves a commemorative blimp at the very least.)

Oh yeah, and at midwicket beneath the Brewongle Stand there is a hasty late addition: "Thx Justin" reads the lonely and lesser-spotted logo - onto which no fielder dared to stray for the first hour of play, for fear of smudging their trousers with freshly sprayed red paint.

Poor old Langer has been a bit of a spare wheel in this valedictory parade of the Titans - Caesar's chariot has been remoulded as a Robin Reliant to accommodate him. If McGrath's announcement was low-key compared to Warne's, then Langer's was almost subterranean. "Langer retires just in time" was the headline in yesterday's Australian - it was probably no more than a bad pun on his first name, but it could also have been a comment on the need for the organising committees to adjust their send-offs.

Take today's tea in the press box, for instance. There, greeting the hungry hoards of hacks, were two grinning images of Warne and McGrath, as created in icing sugar on the top of a pair of commemorative chocolate cakes. Mike Gatting and Mike Atherton were both in the vicinity, no doubt armed with an extra-sharp cake-knife, but where was Langer's gateau? His announcement had come too late for the caterers, though he did at least have a profiterole mountain in his honour (which bore an uncanny resemblance to a gnome's hat).

And while all that feasting was going on (the frenzy was almost as dramatic as the moment when a single tray of scones, cream and jam was let loose in the Melbourne press box) the next act of the Sydney schmaltz-fest was being played out in the middle of the pitch. Sean Ruane, a man improbably described by Andrew Flintoff as "The Operatic Voice of Sport", set up his microphone in front of the Member's Pavilion, and belted out the Sarah Brightman and Andrea Bocelli hit: "Time to say goodbye".

McGrath, Langer and Warne, who would doubtless have preferred to spend his 20 minutes smoking a fag out the back, stood obediently on the balcony, more or less to attention, drinking in the moment. Incidentally, the lyrics of that song include: "I'll go with you to countries I never saw," which could be a comment on the itineraries of modern-day cricket tours. Not that anyone will have known that, of course. No eye in the house would have been dry enough to read the song-sheet.