Even as the Parkroad Boys were making their mark on Kenyan cricket, within their subset there were those who were a touch above the rest. Ongondo admits this easily. ‘Man, Steve and Maurice, they were a class above everybody else.’ Ongondo and the younger Parkroad Boys would see Maurice, Steve and Tom revving into Sir Ali in their cars, loud music splitting the Sunday calm of Parkroad. They would see these guys with whom they had eaten rice and wish to be like them too, especially like Steve and Maurice; Steve Tikolo and Maurice Odumbe, the two finest cricketers Kenya ever produced. The question as to which of the two was the better player is difficult to answer. Both were right-handed batters and right-arm bowlers. Both captained Kenya. Both made their One Day International (ODI) debut in February 1996, against India. Both celebrate their birthdays in June, ten days apart, though Maurice is two years older. While Maurice had followed his older brother into the Aga Khan team and established himself as the star of the side, Steve had followed his older brother into the Swamibapa team and established himself as the star of the side.

According to Zoeb Tayebjee, a veteran Kenyan cricket journalist, Maurice was the more talented batsman. Maurice was skinny and scrawny, unthreatening in how he looked, but he could do things with the bat that Steve could only dream of. Maurice understood the bat; he understood how the bat connected with the ball and could effortlessly calculate the angle and speed at which he needed he need to make the hit, to deceive the flailing arms of the bowling team. When he batted, he was an aggressive middle-order batsman and when he bowled he was an accurate off-spinner. Whenever he stood up at the crease, he knew instinctively where the ball would go and how many runs he could make without getting run out. He was a magician, Maurice.

Steve must have understood that Maurice occupied a stratosphere of talent that he could only wish to join. He must have realised that for him, unlike Maurice, talent alone would not guarantee a successful career in the game. How else can one explain the Cristiano Ronaldo-esque dedication Steve put into his game? There is a story that is told about Maurice, that if a random person was to decide to take up the bat, assemble a team of friends and offer to play Maurice and his team, Maurice ― having concluded that he was infinitely better at cricket than this person and his pack of nobodies ― would spend the night partying or drinking or having sex, or a combination of all these activities, then show up at the crease, maybe still sloshed, and proceed completely to whitewash the other team. This attitude was not only reserved for nobodies. Maurice, he did not discriminate. Once, after receiving a hounding from India, Maurice, the then-Kenya captain, had declared, ‘we’re just going to have to get drunk tonight and get this game behind us.’ The team seems to have followed his advice and gotten properly drunk. Five days later, in a game from which Maurice himself was suspended, his boys had delivered a hiding to the Indians, winning by seventy runs, with the standout performer being Parkroad Boy and rice enthusiast Joseph Angara, who did not concede a run in his first five overs and who claimed Sachin Tenduklar, the most valuable wicket in cricket, for three.

Steve, however, would take a different approach to Maurice, it is said. Steve ― and this is Steve Fucking Tikolo, Stephen Ogonji Tikolo who was also called Guns because he loved Guns n Roses, though it may as well have been because he could hit ‘em faster than the eye could see― would examine the opposition, then eat, prepare his gear and sleep; maybe pray, brush his teeth and everything and be in bed by eight o’clock. And he would wake up at six the next morning, eat breakfast, probably tea and rice―the way these Parkroad Boys loved their rice―brush his teeth again, shower, take his gear and drive to the cricket pitch. Then, because he was fresher and better-rested and better-prepared and better-trained, he would, with his wide range of strokes and sometime medium pace bowling, sometime Chris Gayle-esque offspin, demonstrate decisively to the pack of nobodies that cricket was no sport for them. And he would do it even better than Maurice could.

According to Ongondo, because of this difference in their approaches to the game, while Maurice was the more technically-gifted cricketer, Steve had the better cricket career. In its entirety, Steve scored 3,428 runs to Maurice’s 1,409. While the Maurice diehard would be quick to point that the difference in the number of runs is due to the little matter of Maurice’s five-year absence from the game, then the couch statistician would be quick to point out that five years isn’t enough for one to establish a difference of 2019 runs. See, the same Maurice diehard would exclaim, such was Maurice’s genius that he achieved exactly this difference in runs scored — this number 2019 — the same as the year in which an essay about their lives in Parkroad would be published. At this the armchair statistician would retreat to the hallowed zone of averages and point out that Steve’s ODI batting average supersedes Maurice (29.05 to 26.09), as does his ODI top score (111 to 83), as well as his ODI bowling average (34.20 to 46.33). Additionally, in the course of his career, Steve notched half centuries against all Test-playing nations, apart from New Zealand and Pakistan. Furthermore, Kenya performed much better with Steve as captain than with Maurice as captain. However, what would be the point of such an exercise? The only thing that matters is that both are Kenyan cricket greats and that the Parkroad Boys would have won any Inter-Estate cricket competition in Nairobi, pre-2000.

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