Poor Publicity

Kenya's U19 team played a match yesterday against a visiting Academy side from Western cape in south Africa. The match was part of our preparations for the Africa zone qualifiers for next year's Under 19 World Cup in Malaysia.

Kenya lost by 19 runs after the visitors elected to bat and made 109.

Unfortunately, despite having emailed several people in Kenya requesting information about the U19 qualifier preparations, this is the best I can get. It is gleaned from an article in the Nation where it received two lines at the bottom of a separate article.

These are our up and coming cricket stars. They will be carrying the banner for cricket in Kenya over the next ten years or so and they deserve better.

It constantly irritates me that there is still no means of promoting cricket to the public in Kenya. The press have to really dig to get scores/news and half the time these are treated as big secrets by officials. Cricket needs to be run as a business and to grow that business, the public need to be convinced it is a product worth investing in. How the hell is any business ever going to expand without publicity?

It really should not be a hard game to promote. Other sports in Kenya are currently suffering lack of support through mismanagement (with the exception of Rugby) and Kenyans are desperate for a sport they can follow and believe in. Worldwide cricket is a sport followed by millions.

Getting results and news out there costs nothing. An email to us at Cricket Europe would mean results can be accessed by anyone online the same day as us receiving the email. Both the RVCA and NPCA have used this to great effect over the last year. Again, I repeat, IT COSTS NOTHING. Yet it will give the public the opportunity to follow teams and players. It will mean that news about the goings on in the game spread. It will mean that the following grows and cricket becomes more attractive to sponsors. Yet it is not done. Kenya's players and the long suffering cricket followers deserve more.

This is not a new gripe. I set up this blog for the very reason it is hard to get information about Kenyan cricket. In the last year and a half, gains have been made but this is because other like minded individuals care enough about the game to want to do something. When will those governing the game start to treat it like a product they need to sell. Then, and only then are we actually going to see the game grow.