Former Kenyan Cricket boss and a long serving sports personality Jasmer Singh Grewal has passed on. Grewal died at Agakhan Hospital on Wednesday night after a long illness.
Grewal was inducted into Kenya’s Hall of Fame at the Sportsman of the Year awards (SOYA) last year. Grewal established cricket, hockey and mixed hockey in Kenya in 1947, and following this, he was fondly referred to as ‘The Father of Cricket’. He dedicated his life to cricket and had an honoured club career spanning 28 years (1952-1980) when he featured for Sikh Union cricket outfit as an opening batsman.
He became a Kenyan cricket international in 1956 and donned the national colours till the mid 1960sbefore going into managerial and administration of cricket. He was the team manager of the East Africa Cricket line-up to the inaugural World Cup in England in 1975. Grewal became the chairman of Kenya Cricket Association between 1974 aqnd 1980, after which he was appointed executive officer of KCA in 1996. During the same year, Kenya beat West Indies at the World Cup in India with Grewal as the team manager.
Grewal was awarded and honorary life membership of the Marylebone Cricket Club, the home of cricket in the World in 1992, owing to his contribution to the sport. In 2005, he became the first, and only Kenyan to receive the International Cricket Council’s ‘Lifetime Recognition Award’ presented to him by ICC president Esha Maini in Nairobi. His contribution to cricket in Kenya was enormous. He played in six internationals and is the holder of 307 runs record for the first wicket for Sikh Union (now Simba Union ) against Nakuru Athletic Club.
He was secretary to the Kenya Federation of Sport, and together with Joseph McFarnell, pioneered the Commercial Cricket League. In addition to his life time commitment to cricket, Grewal served the Kenya Football Federation and Kenya Hockey Union too.