Uganda Cricket Cranes: " There was a tiny flaw in the plan. It was bollocks."

Radio New Zealand reports

Uganda cricketers vanish in NZ

Updated at 8:07 am on 6 February 2014

Faruk Ochimi

                                                                      Raymond Otim

Two Ugandan national cricket team players have vanished in New Zealand and are reportedly seeking asylum.

It is very hard to vanish in New Zealand unless you decide to go bush and Otim and Ochimi do not have the skills to do that, so they are probably in hiding. If so it would be a reasonable to assume that they have help.

According to a friend, they plan to travel to later Australia and join two other players who disappeared from a Ugandan cricket team which had gone to play in Australia in 2007.

Yes I think I would have to rate that plan as about as cunning as any of the cunning plans Baldrick managed to come up with in the Blackadder TV series.

AAP reports Raymond Otim and Faruk Ochimi, two of Uganda's "Cricket Cranes", disappeared after an ICC World Cup qualifying tournament concluded in late January.

It is interesting to note that this story only broke in New Zealand today while Red Pepper

 ( Uganda ) published the story 5 days ago. That equals a huge fail on my part, I should have noticed.

"They had planned long before going to New Zealand that they would not return to Uganda, but instead they will disappear from the rest of the team and later travel to Australia and join Ugandans playing cricket there," said James Otim, a friend of the pair.

It is a shame that they didn't do a bit of geographic research if that was their plan. Contrary to my frequent assertions that you can walk across to Australia from New Zealand at low tide, you can't, it is about 2000 km across the Tasman.

The Uganda Cricket Association website cites the Sunday Monitor newspaper as reporting the pair sought asylum in Whakatane, which hosted the team for two tournament warm-up matches.

Look nothing against Whakatane, it is a beautiful coastal town but I just don't have a clue how they could have managed to seek asylum there. The only authorities I imagine they could have handed themselves into would be the NZ Police which would mean as of today when their visas expire they would be in custody, except that I can't see the constabulary being spectacularly interested in taking a couple of young guys who have not really done anything wrong in the sense of breaking serious NZ laws into custody. If they had robbed, committed acts of violence etc.  then they would be in custody and deep shit but as it stands I can visualise a Senior Sargent in the Whakatane station thinking WTF ? And rather hoping the whole problem would just disappear. If they are still in Whakatane they might try disappearing into the local African community at a guess, including them, it would number about two...

Uganda finished bottom in the tournament, losing all six matches heavily.

I was a little disappointed with that result particularly given I had thrown my support behind the Cranes.

Some media in Uganda blamed the poor performance on the lack of commitment by the two players and teammate Richard Okia, who disappeared in Dubai as the team returned home, while they planned their disappearance from the rest of the team.

In 2009, seven of the Under-19 Uganda side at the World Cup qualifiers disappeared in Canada where they had gone to play.

If anyone in the NZ Great Lakes African community knows where these clowns are ( assuming Immigration NZ hasn't caught up with them ) then advise them to turn themselves in to Immigration NZ, I would be more than willing to put them in touch with African Community leaders in Auckland who will assist in sorting this out. email: htuati@gmail.com