Inamdar justifies suspension of Centrals province

Samir Inamdar, Cricket Kenya's chairman, has dismissed suggestions that his board should have acted to suspend the Centrals province much earlier than they did.

As revealed by Cricinfo earlier this week, Centrals were suspended after they failed to promote the game, so much so there were doubts if there was any active cricket being played in the area. Their officials had also failed to attend meetings or respond to queries from Cricket Kenya.

"We have tried our utmost to sort out affairs in Central," Inamdar told Cricinfo. "We did make attempts to get cricket in Central kick-started in the interests of promoting the game there. Senior members of the CK board, including myself, had agreed to travel to Thika in November last year in an effort to get as many clubs and schools together and to create a body capable of running the game there. Joshua Kiragu [the Centrals chairman] said, after being pressed to organise this, that it was inconvenient.

"This meeting was rescheduled to December and again at the last minute we had to cancel because we did not receive any confirmation that he had convened a meeting."

"We did the same thing in Rift and this was highly successful. It can only work this way if there is someone in a province able to mobilise people to come to a meeting to discuss cricket. Not having seen Kiragu at board meetings after that, we had to refer the matter to the executive committee. This was left to after the World Cup since preceding that we had the Mombasa tri-series in January, the World Cricket League in January/February and preparations and departures for the World Cup in March/April.

"The executive tackled the matter in its meeting on May 13 and resolved to remove Kiragu from the board for failure to attend board meetings, and to call a Special General Meeting to discuss the matter with the governing council about Central's position. The executive had recommended the Council to suspend Central from its membership and the Council approved this at its meeting on June 3.

"Let me make it clear that this decision to suspend Central was taken after some long hard thinking," Inamdar continued. "It was never our intention to deprive a province of its status if there was anything that could be done to keep it (and cricket) going." Some critics had accused CK of taking the decision too close to the elections. "The other three provinces were unhappy that Central, having done nothing for the last two years, would be able to have a say in national cricket affairs and perhaps even influence the outcome of any election," Inamdar explained. "I cannot question this as it is an entirely reasonable stand to take in my view.

"This has come about at a time when all provinces are being asked to overhaul their constitutions to ensure that they comply with the CK constitution in the interests of uniformity. Central does not have a constitution nor any capacity to make one now. This is fundamental if it is to select anyone to be a delegate at the AGM. It cannot have a delegate because it has no registered clubs affiliated to it. Faced with this situation I do not know what else we could be expected to do in the run-up to elections."