The Captain of the Nigeria men’s Cricket Team, Sylvester Okpe has said the recent one-month players’ exchange programme that involved himself and two other players to Hollywood Dolphins Academy in Durban, South Africa has given perspective to their training regimen.
Speaking after their return from the exercise that included, Isaac Okpe, Nigeria’s opening bowler and Sesan Adedeji as well, he said, “one thing that I can say is that it was a necessary exposure, and it has impacted in no small measure, our confidence, and general approach to the game”
The Kaduna-based swing-bowler, who led the team that qualified the country for the first appearance at the Under – 19 Cricket World Cup in January 2020 admitted that for obvious reasons, Nigeria Cricket Federation cannot afford to keep the national team in camp all-year round like some nations do. But can explore relationships like recently done to place key players in more challenging leagues globally.
“I can tell you that despite the toll on the us mentally and physically, it was worth the experience. I think our next camping and outing will speak more for us.” He added.
The players were part of the team, who were involved in a Winter League campaign, coupled with sessions at the High-Performance center.
According to Okpe, “we did more of batting, as it is the area, we needed to make more improvement on, and I can tell you, we saw visible change in each player’s performance. Sesan (Adedeji) had a 50 in one of the matches that we played and when Isaac (who was a few days late to the training), joined he did 41-run off 30 balls, that is a fairly strong stat.”
Okpe said he took three wickets in their second game while Adedeji, took two. “It all shows we got something off the exposure. And I wish we could get more players on this type of project.”
The “Yellow-Green” would not be seeing international action till September 2022, when the much-postponed African Cricket Association, ACA Cup is being proposed to be hosted in Benoni, South Africa.
Okpe said, he believes the new found form of the trio will help Nigeria’s returning senior Men’s coach, Uthe Ogbimi who took over from the foreign coach, Asanka Gurusinha, (who resigned on health ground upper month), to raise the form of the team.
“There is the part that we have to infuse what we learnt in SA to the larger team. It’s a teamwork, it we hope to be better really. I hope we can get the team to converge soonest and get a lot of playing time to optimize our form.”
