Uganda Cricket Cranes showed a bit of how far they have come since they last played Kenya by winning the first game on Friday.
The Ugandans executed their plans to near perfection, especially with spin bowling that brought down 7 of the 10 wickets.
The batting that has been reckless most of the time was none existent in the chase down with Arthur Kyobe and Hum Kayondo as well as Roger Mukusa punishing only bad balls before being dismissed.
Skipper Davis Karashani and his deputy Brian Masaba saw out the game with the former finishing it off with a six and he was delighted with the outcome.
“(It’s) our first outing to beat a good enough Kenyan team. I thought we executed our skills very well today, I thought the players fully understand their roles which is what we are trying to see if we can find the right combinations. So for us to start with a win is a tremendous job,” Karashani told the press.
The captain pointed out that death-bowling remains one of the major concerns they are looking to address heading into the Division 3 World Cricket League next month.
“One of our biggest things we are a bit concerned about is our death-bowling; bowling at the death in case we are pushed to that kind of game. We hope we can find the right guys to do the job in these series as we gear up for the main tournament in May.”
Batting has troubled Uganda over the years and Karashani said they are moving in the right direction.
“We have only grown from strength to strength. I can’t say we have the perfect blue print yet but we are in a decent enough position. (You can see) the players understand their roles, the batters know what is expected of them and they are trying to play within what the team requires of them so I think we can only get better.”
On what would be would be considered success at the end of the series, he said: “If we can identify key combinations that we are trying to sort out. Like how many spinners we can play in the main tournament. Which keeper are we going to play? A specialist keeper or a keeper-batsman? We are trying to find the right opening bowler, so at the end of the day if we find those in the five games it would have been successful .”