Kenya A Back To Winning Ways Against Herning

After losing their second match of the tour to Denmark to Esbjerg on Monday, Kenya A bounced back with a win against Division 1 side Herning yesterday. While it was always expected that the Kenyan team should win this match, converting that into a result was important, especially after the slip up in the previous game.

Herning batted first and, despite 45 from Christiansen, were all out for 136 two overs short of the allotted 35. Nehemiah Odhiambo was the pick of the Kenyan bowling taking 3/27.

Kenya A were a little less than convincing in pursuit of the total with Herning bowler Hedegaard taking a miserly 4/12. Two batsmen stood up however and made sure of Kenya's victory with 3 wickets and just under 3 overs remaining. Tanmay Mishra followed up his 42 against Aalborg with a top score of 60, and Malhar Patel also kept up his momentum from the game against Esbjerg scoring an unbeaten 40 to see the tourists home. He had stood out in the last match with 76 off 73 balls, and is doing his claim for a place in the national side no harm at all so far this tour.

While this was a match against weaker opposition, and is still only a warm up to the weekend's games against Denmark, it is great to see things beginning to click into place. Two batsmen making decent scores is a great improvement, and hopefully it will give confidence to the others in the team to follow suit. Odhiambo and Luseno both seem to have had good bowling stints in the warm up games, so should be nicely in the mood for taking more wickets when they face Denmark.

According to the Denmark fixtures list on Cricket Europe, Kenya A take on the Danish Under 23 side today before the main matches against the full national side tomorrow and Saturday. This is certainly a demanding tour for the youngsters, but it is now time to really show what they are made of. Today's match is a must win for Kenya if we are to convince the rest of the World that there is a bright future for Kenyan cricket. The two matches against Denmark are also important to gauge our standard against the depth of the other Associates. Denmark comprehensively defeated The Netherlands A before having the favour returned by the full Dutch team. A good couple of performances against them will show that we are at least stronger in depth than the Dutch.

All the best to the team, and here's looking forward to more red in the Results column.