Kenya captain, coach and board president resign

Friday, 23 February 2018 00:00 - - {{hitsCtrl.values.hits}}

ESPNCricinfo: Kenya’s captain Rakep Patel has resigned after the team returned home winless from the WCL Division Two tournament in Namibia. The coach Thomas Odoyo has also stepped down, and so has the board president Jackie Janmohammed.

By finishing last out of the six teams that participated, Kenya were demoted to Division Three. Their performance included a 218-run defeat, to UAE, which was the tournament’s worst in terms of margin of runs.

Odoyo, who was part of the Kenyan team when they played World Cup cricket, found this turn of fortunes quite tough to take. “The one week we spent in Namibia was a week of mental anguish. It was stressful and I would not wish anyone to go through what I went through,” he was quoted as saying by the Daily Nation. “We broke record of poor performance. For Kenya to improve we must set up a high performance centre.”

Janmohammed, the first woman to head a cricket board, made her call based on the team’s dismal performance as well. “One of the consideration that I took to account was the performance of the national team and somebody had to take responsibility for it,” she told BBC Focus.

Janmohammed said Cricket Kenya would be conducting fresh elections to replace her in a month. “Whenever there a vacancy of an elected member, there must be an election in 30 days. The office will continue until the elections are conducted.”