Former national cricket team skipper Rakep Patel heaved a sigh of relief after International Cricket Council (ICC) postponed the second ICC Men`s Cricket World Cup Challenge League ‘B’ which was slated to be held from August 3-19 in Uganda due to the outbreak of Covid-19.
“As part of the ICC`s comprehensive contingency planning process across all ICC events and after consultation with Members and with the relevant government and public health authorities the decision has been taken to postpone the tournament,” ICC said in a statement.
According to Patel, the development, the third to hit Kenya after the 50 Overs World Cup Qualifiers and the Africa Twenty20 were called off in March, came as a sigh of relief for the Kenya team who has not been training since last year.
“As much as we would have loved to take part in the tournament, I support the decision because it will give us time to put our house in order. It’s now almost seven months since the team trained and yet we were set to play in such a tournament,” Patel said.
ICC Head of Events, Chris Tetley said: “With ongoing international travel restrictions and global health concerns still in place and on government and public health authority advice in relation to COVID-19 we have decided in partnership with Members, to postpone two further qualifying series which form part of the pathway to the men`s Cricket World Cup in 2023.
Since the beginning of the year, Cricket Kenya has been involved in a leadership wrangles that has affected its activities among them the national team’s program.
Before all sporting activities were halted due to COVID-19, CK was involved in a contractual tussles with the players that affected training programmes.
A number of players had vowed not to don the national team colours under the current programme. But Patel, who resigned from his post two years ago, said there is still hope that Kenya could do well in the next leg of the ICC Men’s World Cup Challenge, with better preparations.
“This development from ICC is a big sigh of relief to us. We can use the lengthy break to prepare and get our campaign back on track. But as it is, we are not in good shape and we would have just embarrassed ourselves,” the Kanbis all-rounder said.
“If the tournament would have gone on as planned, we would not have done well and that would have worsened our rankings.”
Since the COVID-19 outbreak in March, all international cricket was suspended but the series between England and West Indies in July will mark the return of international cricket.
