Kenyan cricket is at a cross roads. We continue to do well at a senior One Day level, but have not been so successful at either junior level, or at multi day cricket at the senior level. It is not rocket science as to why. For a cricket player to improve, they need to play regularly against decent opposition. Currently, Kenya has no domestic structure that allows for our top players at any age level to play each other enough. The NPCA leagues are the best in the country, but our best players are split between three divisions and the format is only limited overs.
Cricket Kenya have said since they got in that they will address this, but I am sure that I am not alone in wondering when it will actually happen. There was a national tournament mooted for late last year/early this year, but rains and the WCL scuppered that plan. So far, there seems to be no news on when it will happen, and this is a major worry.
Looking at the situation in Kenyan cricket, I have come up with my own idea on how things could be addressed, but first there are a few facts that need to be established:
- Cricket in Kenya is currently played almost exclusively on Sundays.
- Due to weather and Christmas, there are two windows in the year when cricket can be played: June to November and January to early March. A total of 8 months.
- The core of cricket in Kenya is the regional tournaments run by NPCA, CCA and RVCA.
Because of the importance of the current club structure, my model would try to leave as much of the June-November window free for club cricket as possible. This is after all the grass roots of the game and must be protected.
Assuming 4 weekends in January and February are available and 2 in March, some inroads to November and possibly October would be needed for a national competition.
Though the aim of this model is to introduce multi-day cricket to the players, it also aims to give the top players practice against each other at both One Day and 20-20 level as well. Thus a league system would be set up with each team playing the others in the following:
1 x 2-day game (Sat & Sun)
1 x 50-overs (One Day) game (Sun)
1x 20-20 game. (Sat afternoon)
Host teams would alternate on a yearly basis with a team hosting the 2-day game one year and the one-day and 20-20 the next.
To achieve this, the following time frames would be needed:
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2-Day game:
1st innings lead: 6 points.
Outright win: 16 points.
Draw: 6 points each
Bonus batting points at 150, 200, 250 and 300 runs per innings (4 max per innings)
Bonus fielding points at: 3wkts, 6 wkts, 8 wkts and 10 wkts per innings (4 max per innings)
Total available points: 38
1 Day Game:
Outright win: 16 points
Bonus batting and fielding points as above.
Total points available: 24
20-20 game:
Outright win: 10 points
bonus batting points at: 125, 175, 225, 250 (max 4)
bonus bowling points at; 3, 6, 8, 10 wickets (max 4)
total points available: 18
These may well need to be re-jigged, but give a basic starting point.
TEAMS
In terms of which teams should be included, I have worked on both the current relative strengths of the regions, future potential, youth growth and regional promotion. I believe the following table gives the best guide to how such a competition should be set up:
| # of teams | NPCA | CCA | RVCA | Western | Ken U19 | Uganda | Tanzania |
| 4 | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 0 | 0 |
| 5 | 2 | 1 | 0.7 | 0.3 | 1 | 0 | 0 |
| 6 | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 0.3 | 1 | 1 |
| 7 | 2 | 1 | 0.5 | 0.5 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
| 8 | 2 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 | 1 |
As of April 2007, RVCA considered themselves too weak to compete in such a competition. Realistically however, they are unlikely to be much worse than the CCA and if bolstered by U19 players, they would almost certainly hold their own. As yet, Western hardly exist, but there is immense potential that needs to be encouraged there.
Any of the top 3 options could be implemented immediately with the others being introduced as development in regions such as Western Kenya and Rift Valley start to produce more and better players. Note that the division of players in shared teams would be discretionary and left up to the selecting committee of such teams with guidelines on a minimum number of players from each area.
Note also that the current U19 team are almost all from the NPCA, so until other regions improved to contribute more players, this would in affect give NPCA 3 teams in the competition.
The inclusion of Uganda and Tanzania would obviously depend on their boards and their willingness to participate. Benefits of their inclusion would mean the tournament would be more appealing to sponsors and it would help raise the level of cricket in the region. The make up of the teams would be left up to the boards and, as they get stronger, there would be no reason why these could not be development teams rather than full squads - similar to the team Kenya sent to the Logan Cup. Uganda may well already be at this stage, Tanzania probably not quite yet.
SPONSORSHIP
This is the crux on which such a competition would rest.
I believe the best system would be for a major sponsor to cover the tournament as a whole and then each team be separately sponsored as a franchise. There would have to be a limit on professional players from overseas - I'd suggest 1 per squad, and there would have to be a salary cap. However, I believe it would be a good idea to allow, and indeed encourage, sponsors to spend as much as they wanted in developing the game in their feeder clubs/area.
Money from the event sponsor would need to be allocated to provide regular feed to the media. Ideally this would include full write ups and scorecards in print media as well as highlights packages on TV and radio. This would help grow the supporter base for each team and in time could be expanded to include some live coverage as well.
Sponsorship dollars would also be needed to carry out an aggressive marketing campaign using the top players from each team and incentives such as luck gate prizes and 'catch a six and win' promotions. Initially, fans (especially those who know little or nothing about cricket) will need to be 'bribed' to attend matches. Use of music and entertainment between over/wickets and innings also needs to be looked at, especially in the one day and 20-20 matches. With other spectator sports in the country really suffering, this is an ideal time to promote the game, but as I said, people will initially need other incentives than just the cricket . In time this will change as new people learn about and get hooked on the game and teams will begin to build solid fan bases. It is this goal that must be kept in mind.
The Associates are constantly whining about not getting matches against the top teams, but we also need to start with some decent self-governance. Here's hoping Cricket Kenya follows something along these lines and soon!
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2 comments:
Kenya certainly, in my opinion, should still be considered the top associate side in the world due to there run of consistant form over the past 10 years and should be looking to become the next nation given test match status, which I also believe was initially given to freely to bangladesh in 2000.
I think the best thing Kenya can do is set a goal of establishing a national 4 day competition over the next 5 years, which is a must if they want to play test cricket. As far as scheduling goes cricket kenya should look very hard at copying the typical Australian club set up to begin with, that is, predominantly 2 day matches with day 1 played, for example on January 1, and day 2 played on January 8. playing 2 day matches for 6 months over saturday and sunday is not practical for players who also have to work. The typical Australian season is early October through to late March.
This also gets to my next point that one day and two day cricket has to be kept seperate. It does not work for both formats to be contributing to the same ladder, trust me, i have played in a competition where it does and the players hate it. What should be done is have a seperate one day comp where over the course of a season the players may play a one day match on every 3rd sunday, as part of a one day comp. I am not however sold on there being a Tanzanian or Ugandan team playing in the Kenyan competition regularly. They could do a similar thing to what kneya recently did in zimbabwe but im just not sure it would work.
I think a limit of 2 international players per squad would be good as it gives them another overseas player, possibly from there own country to talk to and stave off homesickness, but allows the kenyan players to see how professional the full member nations are to there cricket. If players are coming from overseas it would be strongly recomended that they only come from either Australia, New Zealand, England or South Africa. From my expierience I have found players from other test nations don't quite cope away from home as easily, though Im yet to determine why.
As far as sponsorship goes, Cricket Kenya need to contact JAMES PACKER, the son of former world series cricket founder kerry, who I think would be more than willing to help Kenya develop its cricket as his father would have wanted.
It looks as though CK are trying to push ahead with a 4 day comp as early as this year. Not sure if it will work with players needing to take time off their day jobs at least 2 of the 4 days. A lot would depend on sponsors and whether they are able to take up that slack.
I see where you are coming from with pros from overseas, but 2 per squad would be a big burden in terms of salary and I believe the money could be better spent, though I think at least one pro per side has benefits. This is something that could possibly be played with.
Regards the points set up - I have played in both types of comp and can't say it really bothered me. It would be as easy to have one ladder for each format as it would a single ladder. Having different ladders would open up the possibility of having slightly different squads for each format, which could be good.
Not sure on young James either - he is quite different from his old man in terms of his interests. I think CK would do better to approach Virgin. Richard Branson is after all a known cricket lover and Virgin are just moving into Kenya so it would make good business sense as well.
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