Cricket

NAMIBIA – Cricket DAWN at Horizon, like an African DON

Rudie Van Vuuren - The Maven

 

Just a little over 2.6 million population but roaring on top of the Africa continent for last 5 years, leaving behind all Associate Cricket Countries, including once famous Cricket Kenya with solid infrastructure, tradition and 56 million population. 

 

Maybe behind all success there is a woman but in Cricket world; as Will Rogers said, even if you are on the right track, you will get runover if you just sit there. A country learns & earns its Leadership every day because leadership and learning are indispensable to each other. 

 

The leader of Namibia Cricket, Rudie Van Vuuren is at the helm of CN - Cricket Namibia for a near 5 years only and under his leadership CN is holding-fast now the T20I global  14th Rank out of 106 ICC members and 16th in ODI.  In comparison to once upon a time African Associate phenomenon Kenya, which got 33rd rank in global T20I and new uprising Uganda  is having  21st rank in same T20I category, at the moment.  Both these top African Associate member countries could not find place in ICC ODI rankings, like Namibia.

 

Its common to find  High-Habilitation does not run parallelly with High-Performed sports person, specially its rarest of rare to find someone who is a Doctor - medical practitioner and at the same time represented the country at the highest level of global sports Competition, that is WORLD CUP.  And here is the wonder for any strange wanderers that around 50 years old  Rudie Van Vuuren represented Namibia in the  Cricket World Cup  in February 2003 and again represented Namibia in Rugby World Cup in the month of October, same year, in Australia. Now Cricket Namibia is playing in ICC T20 World Cup in America when Rudie is its President.

 

 I do not think that anybody in Africa can question about Rudie Van Vuuren’s capacity as a sportsman, dedication as a medical doctor and capabilities as a successful sports administrator but it is beyond my understanding that it seems,  why is he not getting well deserved support from 21 African members of ICC Africa region?  Specially the 19 ICC Associate members? 

 

There is an under-current of incomprehensive & tendentious loud whispers among many African Cricket management that Namibia does not give sufficient scopes and opportunities the nonwhite cricketers to flourish but as an African sports reporters I must put on record  that these unwritten accusation are absolutely fake because the cricket participation of multi racial children  under Rudie´s management is extremely important to CN rock solid cricket foundation. However what I observed that selection of CN senior teams are strictly based on capacity and merits but not the product of condemnable quota system.

 

I wonder, why these Namibian critics of  African Countries  always shy-away to introspect their National team formation with many non-white Indians & Pakistanis origin/passport holder players in the team with objective to perform well in International games? 

 

It’s the time for global Associates, specially the African Associates to display and contribute well earned respect to Namibia Cricket and to give well deserved opportunities to  its extraordinary leader Rudie Van Vuuren to share his leadership skill with others Associates, by supporting him. 

 

The Ghanaian author George Ayittey once said "The Cheetah Generation" refers to the new and angry generation of young African professionals, who look at the African issues and problems from totally different and unique perspective….."

 

In a lighter note to conclude, who could be better than Rudie Van Vuuren to lead like a Cheetah to other Africans in Cricket? Afterall there is also the rumor, for him to be a "Cheetah-whisperer of Naankuse" !!!