NAIROBI, March 13: Kenyan newspapers Thursday hailed the country’s seven-wicket win over Zimbabwe to qualify for the semifinals of the World Cup, proclaiming the team to be the new kings of African cricket.

“Kudos to the cricket team,” cheered the editorial writer of the Daily Nation, Kenya’s most popular newspaper, which introduced a frontpage story with the sentence: “Kenya are the new kings of African cricket”.

“Kenya underscores their ability to attain full Test status ... they earned a place in the 2003 World Cup semifinals, where they join top dogs Australia and India,” wrote the Daily Nation.

It denounced the “arrogance” of the cricket elite nations.

“When Kenya became the first non-Test country to advance to the second round, arrogance among the tournament’s Western participants had it that it was mere luck,” the paper said.

“However, captain Steve Tikolo and his boys have now fiercily ended that talk. Kenya have advanced to the semifinals by beating three Test-playing cricket superpowers — Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe,” the newspaper wrote.

Once again, the Daily Nation criticised New Zealand’s refusal to play in Nairobi, saying the security concerns cited by the Kiwis “made no sense because the Western countries, including England, risk such threats much more.”

The East African Standard described Kenya’s success as “historic”.

The People Daily, a regular critic of the way Kenyan cricket is run, said the Kenyan team’s victory over Zimbabwe was an “achievement of seismic proportions for a country that went to World Cup as an underdog.”

The Daily Nation added: “The victory has opened up avenues that the International Cricket Council (ICC) can exploit to spread the game to more countries and more people”.—AFP