National cricket team finally jetted out to South Africa for the Africa Twenty20 Cup after Cricket South Africa came to their rescue.
On Wednesday, The Star exclusively reported CK’s financial dilemma to take the team for the South Africa tour. However, with only two days to the tournament, hosts CSA came to the country’s rescue—offering to pay both the air tickets and accommodation for the 16-member squad.
With all the teams having confirmed participation and the tournament’s arrangements completed, CSA were concerned over Kenya’s last minutes pull out hence decided to bail the team out. However, CK are expected to reimburse the funds used in facilitating the tour once the current storm in management of cricket in the country is resolved.
However, even after the support from South Africa, the team still missed their flight on Wednesday night. Sources indicated that the players were not aware of their flight time and only came to know about it minutes before departure.
The source, further revealed that CK vice chairman Palli Sehmi, who was coordinating the tour and had the tickets with him, told them to be at the airport by 7:30pm only for him to show up past the time with the flight gates closed.
“We were told to be at the airport at 7:30pm and we were there on time but minus the tickets. The irony is that we didn’t know which flight we were going with. Shehmi, who had the tickets got at the airport after 8pm, only to tell us that we had missed the flight and we will be travelling in the morning,” the source added.
And with the next flight scheduled for the following day 9am (yesterday), a number of players decided to go back home before embarking on the tour the following morning.
The team, which landed in Johannesburg yesterday at noon before connecting to Kimberley, Northern Cape flew out without batsman Rushab Patel.
Rushab was replaced by wicket keeper batsman Irfan Karim at the last minute. Despite displaying poor form for long spell, Rushab has always won the selectors nod. He was Kenya’s wicket keeper when Kenya played their last international assignment in Rwanda but he didn’t play all the matches as his poor form saw Rakep Patel take up the gloves.
Another player, who was in Rwanda and was left out of the team, coached by Lameck Onyango, is bowler Eugene Ochieng. Kenya will open their campaign today against Free State in a Pool ‘C’ match at Diamond Oval in Kimberley. The men from Bloemfontein are also grouped alongside last year’s finalists Northern Cape and KwaZulu-Natal with the only the top side progressing to the knockout stages later this month.
Kenya squad: Rakep Patel, Irfan Karim, Shem Ngoche, Alex Obanda, Dhiren Gondaria, Nelson Odhiambo, Lucas Oluoch, Collins Obuya, Gurdeep Singh, Elijah Otieno, Emmanuel Ringera, Pushpak Kerai, Nehemiah Odhiambo.