Kenya was one of the recognized One Day International teams by International Cricket Council (ICC). Kenya Cricket has its beginning in the late nineteenth century. Cricket in Kenya started with the colonial settlers. The game started off at Mombasa and gradually spread to the interiors of the country.
History of Kenya Cricket
The game started being played regularly around 1910, although with a low frequency of annual tournaments. There were annual fixtures of cricket between the Asians and Europeans. There was another tournament that was played between the settlers and the officials, which continued till around 1960. The Kenyan Cricket Association was formed in 1953. Most of the members in the association were of Asian origin.
The first international tournament was held in 1952 when Kenya played Tanganyika in 1951. The match was also important because it saw a century scored by Russell Endean. A number of international fixtures followed soon after with MCC touring the country in 1957 and then in 1963. The South African cricket team, consisting of all non-European players visited Kenya in 1958. The first exposure to the World Cricket Championship happened when the Kenyan players participated in the 1975 Cricket World Cup as part of the East African team.
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The same team again participated in the championship in 1979. However, during both these outings, the players could not play under their own flag.
Kenya and World Cricket
Kenyan cricket improved standards as lot more and more people began playing the game. Kenya finally participated in ICC World Cup in the year 1996. They attracted the attention of the cricket world after beating the mighty West Indian team that was World Champion for two times. This success was followed by another when Kenya reached the finals of the ICC Trophy in 1997. These consecutive successes brought more attention to the game in the country. Kenya co-sponsored the ICC World Cup in the year 2003. In this tournament too, they surprised everyone to reach the semi finals. However, this great run of success was short lived and due to administrative problems Kenyan cricket started seeing its downfall by the year 2005. Kenya Cricket did not get the recognition at the Test Cricket level. In the Twenty20 form of the game too, Kenya did not fare well in the recently concluded first World Cup.
The reins of the game were taken up by ‘Cricket Kenya’ in 2006 from the KCA (Kenyan Cricket Association) and the country is once again in the path to build its name in the world of Cricket.
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