COMMENT: Ugandan cricket can still be saved

Open your arms to Development schemes
Help Musana and Nyakasura. Instead of charging them league participation fees and asking them to write long irrelevant application letters, give them an easy way into cricket. Consider how much it costs them to bring teams from Soroti and Fort Portal every weekend before you ask them for participation fees! They are doing what you should have been doing in the first place. They have shown initiative.

Schools! Developing cricket! And you’re charging them for it, while they’re incurring costs? I would be embarrassed if I were in your position. Nyakasura alone has produced 2 cricket teams in the league. Students! School boys! That means on an average Saturday, there’s at least 22 players from one school that have been handed to UCA on a silver plate without their effort, from whom they can pick for future and even immediate engagements. What happened to Kasasa? Have u kept an eye on Ntare? Kibuli? Kira College? There’s not one cricket playing school in Gulu? Let alone the northern region? How about Kasese that has kept winning the mini cricket tournaments for years? Can’t there be a league team by now from that area that you would happily fund for the league?

Champions!!!
Once more you give us all the reasons to recognize you as a power house.

Congratulations Olila High School up on retaining the Musana cup 4th Edition. @ClubOlila @CricketUganda @cricng_ @CricketKenya @TheCricketENG pic.twitter.com/CSq4bGaNZf

— SorotiCricketAcademy (@SorotiAcademy) November 19, 2018

Invest in your players and treat them well
We are the only people that want to milk a cow without feeding it. Take them to academies, dress them well, (please get rid of these New South Wales kit for National team use! It’s not befitting a National Team. That kit should go to your development programs, not the National team!) Some national team players don’t have basic equipment like gloves or bat, let alone kit-bags. The team that went to Canada in 2001 were all kitted up with slazenger kits, and that was before we were getting any significant funding! I wonder why it is now very hard! They are now reduced to used bats from the “container”.

On the occasion they buy new ones, they are of the lowest grade not even good enough for schools cricket! There were even exchange programs with South Africa! Kamyuka, Nsubuga Franco and Ssematimba Lawrence went to SA clubs. Kyobe too. And before that Okia Richard, and further back Guy Kimbowa! Find out what it would have taken Kwebiiha, Kamyuka, Ruyange, Ssemanda, Osinde to stay around and try to meet it! The more well-fed the cow is, the bigger it gets and the more milk you get! Simple logic, in my opinion!

Develop and implement sustainable systems with targets and progress landmarks
Have a 20 year plan, 10 year, 5 year and 2 and 1 year plans. Plans that you can refer to. What made Ireland and Afghanistan, 2 teams that we beat, attain Test status while we are heading the opposite direction? They made deliberate progress plans and maps. Ireland sent players into the English County circuit, Afghanistan had theirs in Pakistan! USA recently had theirs in West Indies!

Spare resources for facilities. Don’t buy a swamp!
Buy real land you can build a cricket ground on. (And by the way, watch out for Rwanda! They invested in a ground, good systems and even greater partnerships. Sam Billings, Michael Vaughn, Brian Lara, Herschelle Gibbs! Not bad company to have! One bright morning when we wake up, they’ll have leap-frogged us and we shall be the ones begging for friendlies). Develop departments, positions, coaches etc and deploy them. Let people be accountable!

Clean our house! Please! We are hurting. Stop treating our National symbol with such disdain! It’s not a personal club! It wears Black, Yellow and Red, with a Crane on its crest!

This is going to take some radical measures and people to implement! Friends will be lost, relations broken and hearts broken! But it must be done for the good of this country!

Australia is going through a similar phase! England did so not so long ago after their disappointing World Cup campaign. Who are we not to? I might lose a few friends too after this and might be the least popular, but am not too afraid! I’ve never been the most popular anyway!( I’ve ever been dropped from a team when we were only 11)!

I know many people will get offended by this, please understand I don’t mean anything personal. It’s just the desire to see our National team do well that’s driving me.

I don’t have another platform to express my opinions, (and am entitled to mine), other than this one. If we look objectively, there might be some useful insights. Don’t ban me from the league please!

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WHO is Ivan Thawithemwira? (click)

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Points table

RESULTS

• Kenya won the toss and elected to bat.

• Denmark won the toss and elected to bat.

• Uganda won the toss and elected to field.

• Oman won the toss and elected to field.

• Kenya won the toss and elected to field.
• This was the first win for the United States against Kenya.^[31]

• Denmark won the toss and elected to field.

• Denmark won the toss and elected to bat.

• Uganda won the toss and elected to bat.

• Uganda won the toss and elected to field.

• Denmark won the toss and elected to field.

• Oman won the toss and elected to field.

• Kenya won the toss and elected to bat.

• Denmark won the toss and elected to field.

• Uganda won the toss and elected to bat.

• United States won the toss and elected to field.