Kongonis emerged unscathed from the Nairobi downpour yesterday to register a win against the visiting Coast Pekee side at the Nairobi Club. Coast Pekee made early inroads into Kongonis batting thanks to Lucas Oluoch and Bhavya Thakkar, the two seamers accounting for six wickets between them.
Oluoch who finished with figures of 4 for 48, had removed Baden Powell Odinga for nought with the scores on 2 and came back to check the middle-order with three key wickets of Nicholas Oluoch (46), Rajesh Bhudiya and Emmanuel Ringera’s 22 apiece. Thakkar (2-24), the other seamer accounted for danger-man Rakep Patel (27) and snared Dominic Wesonga for nought.
However Gordon brown wasn’t going to let Coast Pekee have it all their way, he made his way to a patient 76 including 6 fours rotating the strike and picking the singles and doubles in the field to help the Ngong road based side post a challenging 219 for 8 off 50 overs.
In the afternoon innings curtailed by rains, Kongonis had bowled well to reduce Coast Pekee to 78 for the loss of six wickets. Wesonga had led the onslaught picking 2 for 14 off six overs as the Mombasa side’s batsmen failed to impress.
Then 23 overs into the innings, the heavens finally opened and the match had to be abandoned at this stage, with a result (69 run win for Kongonis) being achieved under the duckworth-lewis method, since the minimum number of overs (20) needed to constitute a match by both teams had been achieved.
The spoils were shared between Cricket Tours Africa’s Nairobi Buffaloes and Nile Knights from Uganda at the Nairobi Gymkhana on Sunday afternoon. The rain that fell on Saturday after the match began rather early and caught up with the Knights who were just 2.2 overs short of registering a win over the hosts under the duckworth-lewis method which had them several runs ahead, but that was not to be, as the rains began to fall after 17.4 overs with the Buffaloes in a spot at 55 for the loss of 4 wickets in pursuit of 262 for victory. The rain never relented and came down until dusk meaning the points were shared by both teams.
It was the second weekend in a row when matches of the 50-over format had been affected by rain, but last week’s cancellations were in the Ugandan capital and they seem to have brought the rain with them to the Kenyan side. Earlier on, Knights had put up a good total thanks to Arthur Kyobe had hit a 100-ball 123 including 8 fours and the same number of sixes as he guided them to a healthy position in the match.
In Nakuru, Rwenzori elected to bowl and managed to restrict the Rhinos to 137 all out from 49.4 overs. Prashant Srinivas, Ramesh Mepani and Rajesh Khetiya had battled into scores of 26, 20 and 20 respectively for the Rift outfit. Rwenzori’s bowlers Jonathan Sebanja and youngster Henry Seyondo accounted 3 wickets each in the morning session of play.
In their chase of Rhinos target of 138, Roger Mukasa’s quick fire 38 off 30 deliveries with 7 fours and Ronald Semanda’s explosive unbeaten 33 off just put paid to Rhinos interest in the match. Mitesh Sanghani’s 3 for 31 and Joseph Angara’s 2 for 23 had threatened to destabilize the chase but the Warriors found more weapons in their armour to gun down the Rhinos.
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