Kenyans leave Windies stumped
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Your support makes all the difference.Kenya joined the Faroe Islands, Colchester United and Buster Douglas yesterday when they produced one of the great sporting upsets of all time, defeating the West Indies in cricket's World Cup.
Their 73-run win over a side including the world's greatest batsman, Brian Lara, in Pune was ranks on sport's Richter scale alongside Colchester's 3-2 defeat of the then invincible Leeds United football team in the 1971 FA Cup, the heavyweight boxer James "Buster" Douglas's knockout of Mike Tyson in 1990, and the tiny Faroe Islands' European Championship victory over Austria in in the same year. It is by far the greatest shock the cricket world has seen.
The West Indies, the leading cricket nation for the best part of 20 years from the mid-Seventies, collapsed in truly spectacular fashion to Kenya's amateur team of salesmen, students and businessmen.
Chasing only a moderate target of 166 they could not even muster 100 runs between them, being bowled out for just 93. Their captain, Richie Richardson, scored five, Lara eight, Sherwin Campbell four and Keith Arthurton a duck, as they tumbled to 35 for 4. That soon became 81 for 8 and the game was up.
Maurice Odumbe, the 25-year-old insurance salesman who captains Kenya, was the star of Africa, taking three wickets with his off-spin and getting a smart run-out with a direct hit on the stumps. "We came to the World Cup to prove that we could play and I think that we did prove that today," he said. "It is like having won the World Cup."
The bookies still rate the West Indies a slightly better bet for the Cup, though - they are 16-1, while Kenya are 500-1. And unlike previous sporting shocks, they seem to have escaped this one scot-free; none of Britain's leading three bookmakers took a single bet on Kenya to win yesterday - they were 16-1 at the start.
But if Kenya go home without winning another game they will not leave the sub-continent empty-handed. Lara went into their dressing-room to congratulate the victors after the game, and dutifully acceded to their request to have his picture taken with every team member.
Report, page 28
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