•The 42-year-old is no doubt one of the finest cricketers the country ever produced.
•He is also the first Associate player to complete the double of 1000 runs, a feat he achieved in 2007 during the ICC Cricket World Cup.
Image: FILE
Not so many people have made it from the dregs of collecting balls all the way through to the summit of the sport.
However, there have been a few memorable examples of dedicated ball boys who have broken the duck and went on to treat spectators to some exhilarating displays of sporting artistry.
Legendary Kenya cricketer Thomas Odoyo is one such man. Odoyo grew up at Nairobi’s Kenya Institute of Education which is adjacent to Nairobi Gymkhana. He schooled at City Primary before later joining City High School.As a young boy, he seemed destined for a career in other sports but vividly remembers how he and his colleagues became cricketers by default.
“So Jimmy Kamende, Josephat Ababu, myself and others used to jump over the Gymkhana fence and be tennis ball boys. While we were there, we developed an interest to play cricket. At that time, cricket practice used to happen every evening unlike today where they only do it during weekends,” the famous right-handed batsman and medium-fast bowler revealed.
So how did Odoyo’s cricket dream come to fruition?
“Because of pressing work and school commitment, some of the players could not make it to training so they needed people to fill the void left behind. We got that opportunity to bowl for them and that’s how we loved the game and started bowling.”
Odoyo also remembers that each club back then had their own methods of developing their own youngsters.
“At the time, we were at Nairobi Gymkhana and they absorbed us. After bowling, experts took us through batting lessons, which we took seriously. On Saturdays when they had games, they invited us to fill their teams and we didn’t take it for granted,” he hinted.
“I was a 12th man for a number of years before I started playing for the Gymkhana ‘B; side where I featured for one year. I then moved to the ‘A’ side where I was the 12th man for half season. Thereafter, I joined the national team at the age of 17. I learned cricket on my own by just watching others play. I then got the tips from coaches to better it,” Odoyo explained.
“Being calm and collected was the strongest point of my game. I never panicked.”
The 42-year-old is no doubt one of the finest cricketers the country ever produced. He’s the only player to date to have taken 100 ODI wickets for Kenya and the first Associate player to complete the double of 1000 runs, a feat he achieved in 2007 during the ICC Cricket World Cup.
The bowling legend is nevertheless disillusioned by standards of the game Kenya once shone against test playing nations with the best performance being the 2003 World Cup, where they romped into the semis.
Kenya made it to the World Cup in 2007 and 2011 but their presence in the subsequent editions wasn’t felt. The team were a pale shadow of their former selves.
With the current state of Kenyan cricket being at its lowest ebb, Odoyo, a former national team assistant coach and the ex-Kenya Under-19 team head coach, explains the reasons behind it.
“We are in a terrible situation because the structures are all wrong; there are no contracts for players and no cricket is being played. All that is there is just for fun, more of pass time. The league in Mombasa is not stronger than Nairobi would be, it’s just better organised. If we can manage to sort out the wrangles, I think Nairobi league is stronger,” he noted.
“It’s bad for the sport. As long as there is boardroom wrangling, it means cricket is not going on and that is what is happening now. There is no consensus for anything and the sad part is that the people who are wrangling are mostly former players who should know better that cricket and politics don’t mix,” Odoyo went on.
“We need to have a consensus about everything we do unless we want to waste time. It’s always a good feeling seeing former players managing the sport. I want to be part of the administration one day, but nobody wants to be an administrator where the game is not being played.”
Odoyo has advocated for the strengthening of clubs and involving them to make the league better if not revive the good old days.
“There’s no way you will ignore the clubs and expect cricket to go on. You can’t run cricket from the comfort zone of your office. You need the clubs to support you. As much as we want to spread the game to the counties, we have to involve clubs that started it all.”
“Those days we had club-based structures and the professional players who came to play for clubs were awesome. They included the likes of Martin Jacobs, Sandeep Patil, Lalchand Rajput who has coached Afghanistan and Chandrakant Pandit, who was the coach of Mumbai Cricket team among others. They all ended up playing for India,” Odoyo, the 2007 ICC Associate ODI Player of the Year and member of 1996,1999, 2007 and 2011 World Cups, said.
“Professional players helped raise the quality of cricket in the country by making the league quite competitive.
“This made us stronger when we played for the national team. We also matched the results of the cricket playing nations.”
“Most of us grew up watching the West Indies and having the Indian players coming here.
“We savoured a different brand of cricket—more of a blend of West Indies and Indian—which helped us beat the likes of Scotland and Ireland hands down,” he revealed.
“The reason we used to make it to World Cups is because we played associates. By that time, the top associate was Bangladesh. We were neck-to-neck with Bangladesh and we used to compete with them a lot.”
“Another thing that made it easy for us to perform is because we had a group of players who had gelled and understood our game. We did not need too much guidance from the coach to know what we were supposed to do. The role of the coach was just to motivate us and give us the game plan. It was very easy for players to know their role and executed it and that’s how we managed to qualify for World Cups most of the time,” Odoyo, said.
Apart from ending wrangles, Odoyo avers that the national governing body should come up with structures and with the help of the government, embrace exchange programmes with to- notch cricket playing nations like India.
Odoyo, remembers with nostalgia just how current India Prime Minister, Narendra Modi would offer to bring coaches from his country to share their expertise on the game while in return, Kenya would send athletics coaches.
“I believe the offer is still valid and we only need to revive interest. It’s upto the national body to follow it up with the government to make it happen. It’s a good initiative because our coaches need to learn from the best as well. We have cricket grounds and that is the advantage and all we need is just making use of them. We can work with counties to devolve cricket and I’m working with the Siaya County to come up with something,” Odoyo, a father of two daughters stated.
“I played my first World Cup when I was almost 17 years in1996. I was a teenager and my teammates were older than me. I would count my age group to be the likes of Steve Tikolo, Kennedy Obuya, Martin Suji and to an extent Maurice Odumbe. But they were still older than me. Later, those are the people that I played with for some years.”
“The World Cup was co-hosted by India, Sri Lanka and Pakistan. Our biggest achievement is we beat West Indies in Pune, India. The feeling was awesome because we grew up idolising them,” Odoyo recalled his World Cup debut where Kenya were drawn against Sri Lanka, Australia, India, West Indies and Zimbabwe. Kenya lost their three games and were eliminated after the group stages.
During the 1999 World Cup, Kenya were placed in the same first round group as hosts England, India, South Africa, Sri Lanka and Zimbabwe. They lost all five of their games in the tournament. “Next World Cup was 1999. We did not make it to the second round, and did not win a single match.”
The 2003 World Cup was a historic one that is remembered to date after Kenya managed to make it to the semi-finals for the first time ever. The tournament was to be held in South Africa, with Kenya co-hosting their two matches against Sri Lanka and New Zealand. New Zealand opted out, gifting the host with a walkover. Kenya lost to India in the semis by 91 runs.
Odoyo recalls that the 2003 outffit was properly gelled and that the eight core players had been together for a while. They included Kennedy Obuya, Martin Suji, Collins Obuya, Aasif Karim, Brijal Patel, Steve Tikolo, David Obuya, Ravindu Dhirajlal Shah, Hitesh Modi and Odoyo.
“The only ‘home advantage’ we had were the conditions at that time because the wickets during that World Cup were slow.
“ It was not the South Africa bouncy tracks because of the dry nature and so it made us dominate. Sri Lanka also suited our style of play.
“We beat Zimbabwe and played Sri Lanka at home. We took full advantage and won. We took all our chances and what made the difference for us is how we bowled. It was our best performance bearing in mind all the turmoil we had in cricket.”
In 2007, Kenya hosted Division One of the World Cricket League at three grounds in Nairobi, playing against Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland. Kenya also won this event, beating Scotland in the final. This was followed by the 2007 World Cup, Kenya’s fourth global show.
Kenya beat Canada in the first round, but lost to England and New Zealand, thus missing out on the Super Eight stage.
“Roger Andrew Harper was the man. He came in when Kenyan cricket was in disarray and assembled a team consisting of youngsters. Tthe only seniors were Peter Ongondo, Steve Tikolo and mself. That enabled us to qualify for the 2007 World Cup.”
Kenya qualified for the 2011 Cricket World Cup but failed to win a single match—being eliminated in group stages. Kenya lost to New Zealand, Pakistan, Sri Lanka, Canada, Australia and Zimbabwe.
Asked about his best moments, Odoyo said: “I will always treasure our 2003 semis of World Cup. That was big, a feat several big cricket nations would wish to play at that level in World Cup.”
“The other was in 2007 when I savoured Associate Player of the Year award in ICC in South Africa. This achievement was also special. My performance is what made Kenya qualify for 2007 World Cup,” said Odoyo. He also played two seasons in Bangladesh and cherished the moments.
And when did his association with cricket hit a rock bottom?
“When I was a coach for the national team during the 2018 World Cup qualifiers in Namibia, I felt helpless because everything was going wrong despite all the efforts I had put in place. After that tournament where we performed poorly, I had to resign,” lamented Odoyo.
Also asked if he can come back to coaching, Odoyo went on: “Cricket will always be in my blood and when it comes to cricket, I will stop what I’m doing to go and help, so if the opportunity comes, I will create time to go and help cricket because I owe my life to cricket. I will always be a cricketer. Cricket can be used as a source of livelihood for many youths in this country. Cricket Kenya need to work with the government to try and help develop the game and take it to the highest level. Kenya has a lot of talent, it’s only getting our structures right.”