Cricket hoping to salvage what remains of 2020

The year 2020 started on a promising note with the National U-19 Girls Team winning the Bi-lateral Series in January against Tanzania.

The National Men’s Team – The Cricket Cranes - had a tour to Sanjay Farm, Gujarat via Qatar and Sapphale in Mumbai. The tour was comprised of mainly the youngsters who were exposed to some good level of cricket.

In our strategy, we were looking up to international success for all the teams, making cricket more popular - developing of games, operational efficiency and making cricket commercial, thus getting more partnerships. But alas! The world was hit with a pandemic that affected activities planned for the year.

The Cricket Cranes that are currently leading the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Cup Challenge League B were the most affected. Uganda as a country was also affected as it missed out on hosting Round II of the same tournament which was scheduled to run from August 1-14 later this year with ICC deeming it wise to postpone the global meet.

The inaugural Africa Cricket Association (ACA) T20 Cup scheduled for end of March was also cancelled. The ICC T20 Sub Regional Qualifier scheduled for April was also called off together with the regional qualifiers.

The women were also affected with the Twenty20 Internationals (T20Is) scheduled for Qatar in April being foregone. We were also set to host the Zimbabwean franchise Takashinga in April as well as have the U-23s travel to Zimbabwe in June.

On the local scene, Aziz Damani were bound to commence their defence of the National Cricket League title for both men and women but this did not take off as scheduled. Busoga College Mwiri will also not get the chance to defend their Schools Cricket Week title together with Olila High School in the boys and girls categories, respectively. Basically, all programmes are on a standstill.

But things have continued to happen. Uganda brought on board Laurence Mahatlane as Cricket Cranes head coach for a three-year deal. The former South African coach will step foot into the country as soon as Entebbe International Airport is open to passenger flights. He is expected to help build structures for performance as well as professionalise the national teams.

Uganda Cricket Association (UCA) has not sat back but continued to engage the cricket fraternity through webinars. Several coaching and umpiring online courses have been held.

UCA also held Savings & Investment, Honesty & Accountability Webinars. We have also extended relief to national team players, volunteers, teachers and club players.
We are not sure when sports will be re-opened but the National Council of Sports has come up with Standard Operation Procedures (SOPs) that we hope will be given a green light.

If it is not possible to have fully fledged leagues for both the men and women, we are planning to have short tournaments such as T20s and T10s thus time allowing. We had kicked off the men’s Elite League and will resume when the lockdown ends.

An elite league for the women has also been planned for this year if time allows.
On the development of facilities, grass wicket works on Jinja Oval have commenced to put it at international level. Astro turf surfaces were laid in Masaka SS. Teso College and Kiira College Butiki will also benefit from this.

At the moment, we are trying as much as possible to formulate plans for next year knowing how busy it will be. We are encouraging everyone to keep safe during this period and to respect the guidelines and directives from President Museveni and Ministry of Health. We would like to play again but keeping alive and safe should come first.

Mr Ondeko is the CEO of Uganda Cricket Association.
Email: [email protected] Twitter: @martin_ondeko