Kenyan Legend Reveals Grand Plans for Cricket Cranes as He Returns for Third Stint

Kenyan cricket legend Steve Tikolo is keen to lift the standards of Ugandan Cricket and believes the team has the quality to qualify for the 2028 T20 Cricket World Cup.

Tikolo has returned for a third stint as Cricket Cranes coach, his last having been in 2019, and he has exuded confidence in the squad that it will achieve the objectives set out.

“Any challenge is a tough challenge but it is how you take it,” Tikolo said on NTV. “We are going to work with the team in terms of how we get the players ready for every game we play. We take the challenge head on and that starts in training.”

“The task ahead is tough but I am prepared. I do not think it will be a challenge. I have had an opportunity to see some of the younger players, some of them in Tanzania and Nigeria and when I was here, most of them were coming up,” he added.

Tikolo has been handed a three-year contract with his main task being to ensure the Cricket Cranes are part of the qualified teams to the 2028 T20 Cricket World Cup in New Zealand and Australia.

The legendary star, a former One Day International captain, who scored the most runs and took the second most wickets for Kenya in One Day Internationals, feels that dream is possible.

“The standards have gone up in the T20 game as we saw in the T20 World Cup but for me, it is not something that is not achievable” said Tikolo. “It is how you work with the players, starting right from the training sessions and then when you have your practice games, how you go about it.”

Tikolo has outlined how he plans to get the Cricket Cranes firing on all cylinders after picking out key areas of improvement.

“You can achieve anything when you set your mind to it. We are going to put in place training programmes that will address that issue of the team scoring 170 or 180 runs and above,” he said.

“It is a good opportunity for us to have. When you get to play games is when you get to see what needs to be done and rectified. Happy that we have three ODIs and two T20s in Namibia. I really want to work on the batting, the mindset of batting in a 50 over game.”