Rhino Cup Cricket Tournament

By Jeremiah Saning’o
The Black and White Rhinos at Ol Pejeta Conservancy are thrilled to see the return of the Rhino Cup Cricket Tournament scheduled for 21st-23rd June this year. The charity event aims to raise funds for the continued care and protection of the endangered rhino species.
Teams from South Africa, Australia, England, India, Pakistan, New Zealand, and a couple more countries will be represented in this year’s edition making it the most competitive version of the tournament since its inaugural in 2015.
This will be caused by; teams playing the Last Man Stands World Cup that will run in Nairobi for the next week after the Rhino cup taking the tournament as part of their warm up matches.
The experience in the annual tournament is just superbly amazing to get words to describe.
The tournament plays a major role in keeping the cricket spirit in the country, improving lives of kids from vulnerable areas through supporting their education and sensitization on the importance of wildlife conservation focusing on the only two remaining northern white rhinos in the world.
The players, organizing teams and the supporters arrive on Friday the 21st and camp in the conservancy till the last match played on Sunday 23rd,, a good number usually opt to stay for a couple more days to enjoy the magnificent conservative facilities and ambience.
Ol Pejeta is home to 165 critically endangered black rhinos, 52 southern white rhinos, and the last two remaining northern whites. All of them are monitored day and night by an armed rhino protection squad, supported by a wider team of rangers and a K9 dog unit. It costs about US$850 per month to protect a single rhino, but it works from donations, and from local and international sponsors. Through this, the conservancy has not lost any rhino to poaching in more than five years.
“Sadly, only two northern white rhinos remain in the world, living in Kenya’s Ol Pejeta Conservancy. Their population is declining, and because both are female, named Najin and Fatu, conservation efforts are urgently needed to ensure their survival, The Rhino Cup Cricket Tournament is bringing fun in a one-of-a-kind cricket in the wilderness experience to support the efforts already in place.”
The shadow from Mt. Kenya revolves close to the pitch. Take a second to vision this, from the glorious view of Mt. Kenya in the distance, with a peak sharp enough to inject the sky, to the slow grazing rhino, calm enough to attract a golden butterfly, with dark African patterns running through the wings, to land just above its rough horns. All the while, a pink cricket ball is hit high enough and far into the wild to scare away the confused beautiful birds standing by as the batters score their runs and much more to expect.