Uganda: Cricket's Opening Gambit

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The Weekly Observer (Kampala)

COLUMN
16 July 2008
Posted to the web 17 July 2008

Robert Madoi

It's the game of chess (some prefer to call it anything but a game!) where gambits are usual occurrences. A gambit dictates that a player sacrifices minor pieces in order to obtain an advantageous position.

Now, chess wise-heads will tell you that you have no business playing the game if a frown is what you afford to risk-taking. It often pays to throw caution to the wind, but in so doing you don't go for the jugular in a bare-knuckle style. What you do, instead, is to lure your foe into a trap.

How strange then that, despite being worlds apart, cricket and chess have the odd thing in common. There may be no pawns in cricket, but the gentleman's sport has showcased a pretty healthy appetite for cuddling gambits.

Used as antidotes to opening conundrums, gambits are commonplace in cricket. The game's leading lights first led the way. Now the trail appears to have been blazed for the minnows. Associate cricketing countries like Oman and the United Arab Emirates (UAE) have employed the gambit of using a bowler as an opener such that their batting attack is still potent in the crucial middle overs.

Uganda for some reason hasn't embraced such a gambit. Many opening pairings have been used but they haven't had the much-desired ripple effect.

It wasn't so far back that the local cricket selectors thought they had stumbled on a goldmine when they fused young openers Roger Mukasa and Arthur Kyobe to such devastating effect.

In this age where mandatory powerplays in the first 10 overs stipulate that a team has a cavalier batsman wielding the opening reins, Team Uganda needed to readjust its opening batting combo that had stonewallers grinding out scores from the onset. In Mukasa, Team Uganda had a gung-ho batsman who wouldn't shudder whilst attempting to cross the boundary. Kyobe was the perfect foil, mixing caution with aggression.

But somehow things never worked as the two usually gave away their wickets cheaply, exposing Team Uganda's capricious middle order. Now, the roadside talk has anyone from in-form Joel Olweny to the burgeoning Emmanuel Nakaana being used to solve Team Uganda's opening conundrum.

All this will probably give new national cricket coach Ebrahim Barney Mohammed a migraine. But the South African native could do away with dashing to the pharmacy for a prescription of analgesics. After all, the antidote to Uganda's opening combo was there for all to see when Tornado played Tornado B in the Castle Lager Cricket League last Sunday - a day before Barney was unveiled to the local media.

Chasing a paltry 173 for victory, Tornado B banked on a brazen 85 from Ronald Semanda to seal an improbable three-wicket win. Pint-sized Semanda has over the years established a reputation of having a stomach for punching way above his weight. But his rope-a-dope tactics have primarily been with the ball where he has acquitted himself as Team Uganda's most economical bowler.

The past couple or so of years have, however, seen Semanda make inroads with the bat. At last year's Division II World Cricket League, the 19-year-old hit a 113-ball 72 in a seven-wicket loss to UAE. What was remarkable about Semanda's gritty knock was that he grafted it whilst playing at the pivotal No.3 slot.

All this means that if Barney wants his team to retain fire-power in the middle overs, he can take a gambit in asking Semanda to open for Team Uganda with a gung-ho batsman. This will hold Team Uganda in good stead as the loss of Semanda in the crucial first 10 overs wouldn't hurt as much as losing a batting pillar.

Barney should probably give it a thought.

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