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February 7, 2007
Chasing Hair
Posted by Will Luke on 02/07/2007 in World Cricket League
A terrific day for Kenya, one they fully deserve to enjoy. They were the pre-tournament favourites, undoubtedly, but wanted to win just that little bit extra. It meant a lot to them – that much was obvious.
I’ve been so impressed with their spirit, not to mention skill. When Maurice Ouma needlessly ran himself out today his partner, David Obuya, flung his bat in the air several metres behind his head. Isolated, the incident smacked of the bad, old, petulant Kenya. But actually, it was the new, fighting, don’t-waste-your-wicket-away Kenya; they don’t just want to win, but win well. It is a hugely encouraging sign and Roger Harper deserves credit for instilling in them this new fighting spirit.
The day was blighted somewhat by the news that Darrell Hair was to sue the ICC and Pakistan Cricket Board. We weren’t expecting it (nor was Darrell, to be fair) and the news came through at about 10.30 Kenya time (07.30GMT), around the time Scotland were throwing away the cup. I bumped into a vaguely familiar face, or one I thought I recognised: Adam Mynott, the BBC’s East Africa correspondent who had been dispatched on the same mission: to extract information from Hairstone. I knew both of us would lose, and so we did.
Continue reading "Chasing Hair"
February 6, 2007
Media hyenas
Posted by Will Luke on 02/06/2007 in World Cricket League
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No time to wait
© Will Luke
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Last night’s closing ceremony was a big, loud, extravagant feast of an occasion. Suitably hosted at the Safari Park Hotel – a hotel large enough for me to lose a taxi driver inside its grounds – it was a luxuriant way to end the tournament. Tom Tikolo did his very best to control a hungry audience once the half-dozen speeches had finished, by letting the teams go up to the buffet in alphabetical order. Bermuda went first (cue wry jibes from cynical hacks on the media table), then Canada...but the decorum ended there and, led by the scavenging media, we descended on the mountain of food like a pack of hyenas. Apologies to the diplomats and dignitaries present for queue-jumping, but well done for joining in.
The food was magnificent, waiters serving meat, cut from the bone, off giant forks, right onto our plates. It was not the place for squeamish vegetarians – a meat lover’s paradise. Beef, lamb, chicken and even some I didn’t recognise, but it all tasted damn fine.
The humble travellers’ cheque doesn’t carry the weight it once did. At least, that’s what I have found out today. Seven tellers from seven banks in Nairobi’s central business district each turned up their noses at my crisp £20 notes which had been safely ensconced inside the safe in my room. One from Barclays even laughed at them, as though I was handling some dodgy notes made in my doss house from Fakeacheqistan. Eventually I found a “Forex” who agreed to take them, the relief even prompting me to propose to the girl behind the desk. I don’t know what I would’ve done had she agreed. Fortunately she wasn’t nearly as mad as me, turned me down and handed over my Kenyan shillings.
February 5, 2007
Elephants and hospitals
Posted by Will Luke on 02/05/2007 in World Cricket League
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A baby elephant at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust
© Will Luke
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The Nairobi Hospital is a big, beasting building which most Nairobi taxi drivers seem proud of. “One of the best hospitals in Africa” they tell me. Until yesterday, I muttered my approval but hadn’t expected to visit it. After being struck down with the finest food poisoning Africa can serve, I did visit it – and very good they were too.
Runs a plenty. Before the proverbial hit the non-existent fan, I went to one of the many sports clubs to speak to Scotland prior to yesterday’s game. Their training session was to be held at the Sir Ali Muslim Club (SAMC), a run-down and rather decrepit, sad looking place. Khan, the manager, stood motionless inside the gloomy hallways and spoke at length of the club’s ailing fortunes. Like many, they need money. Desperately. And they don’t know when it will come, nor how much they will get.
The money is there though. Each of the grounds that I have seen all deserve their ODI status. The pitches are good and true (the outfields, as one Ireland player told me, are “pretty shoddy” in some cases) and the facilities, on the whole, are impressive. However, the problem facing Kenya has more to do with the link between schools and these clubs. The better the facilities these clubs can offer, the greater the chances of producing more Kenyan internationals.
As I should’ve suspected having spent a week in Africa, Scotland’s planned training session, at 9.00am, was moved. “Maybe they’ll be here at 3, maybe 5,” Khan told me. So on the way back to my hotel I stopped off at The David Sheldrick Wildlife Trust (who rely on donations). They only open for one hour each day, between 11 and midday, as the orphaned elephants aren’t yet used to human contact. You wouldn’t have believed it, though, as they marched around, oblivious to the 40 or so onlookers, and wallowed in the mud beneath our feet - even spraying a group of Americans who got a little too close with mud and water.
February 2, 2007
Hakuna matata
Posted by Will Luke on 02/02/2007 in World Cricket League
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Groundsmen lift water from a soggy outfield at Ruaraka
© Will Luke
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Travelling in Nairobi is an exercise in patience. Fortunately, I am now on brilliant terms with nearly every taxi driver in the city – all of whom, somehow, seem to know me. I certainly know them. Daniel knows Joseph who knows Albert who knows...and so on. A trip that should take five minutes invariably takes 40 and, in that respect, it’s not unlike driving in London. Without the white vans.
But it’s much, much more fun; people casually walk across the main road, stopping cars with an invisible force field. Roundabouts are more stopabouts, or jamabouts, and everyone is relaxed about the whole affair. They're relaxed about everything in fact. A five-minute delay in Britain reduces some drivers to quivering, shaking wrecks, spitting venom at anyone who will ignore them, although perhaps that’s just me. I realised last night that tapping the dashboard with my angry fingers was going to get no one anywhere, least of all me and my driver to our destination.
I’m at Ruaraka today, a ground more English than many in England; an almost perfect circle with mature acacia trees around the boundary, broken up by the advertising boards around it. It took some finding, though, as there are two clubs called Ruaraka within spitting distance of each other. In fact, this whole area is chock full of sporting clubs, often sponsored by various banks – squash, cricket grounds, gyms and others all crammed into a small area – which is terrific to see.
I was reminded by a player yesterday that my comparisons between Britain and Kenya aren’t very instructive. There are problems in Britain, problems in Africa – problems everywhere and, in that respect, he felt it was pointless highlighting them. True enough. But there is a fine line between comparisons and criticism. For a Briton visiting Nairobi for the first time, comparisons are inevitable...but I’ll keep them as just that: comparisons.
Hakuna matata.
January 31, 2007
Drawing in the crowds
Posted by Will Luke on 01/31/2007 in World Cricket League
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K-E-N-Y-A...Kenya!
© Will Luke
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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.
January 30, 2007
The light-fingered policeman
Posted by Will Luke on 01/30/2007 in World Cricket League
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Scene of the crime
© Will Luke
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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.
Continue reading "The light-fingered policeman"
January 29, 2007
Nairobbery snobbery
Posted by Will Luke on 01/29/2007 in World Cricket League
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.”
Pass the pigeon, please
Posted by Will Luke on 01/29/2007 in World Cricket League
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Bermuda were haphazard with their batting ... not that the outside world knew
© Will Luke
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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.
Continue reading "Pass the pigeon, please"
January 28, 2007
Karibu
Posted by Will Luke on 01/28/2007 in World Cricket League
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The Nairobi Club: home for two weeks
© Cricinfo Ltd
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“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.
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