By Adeyemi Robinson-Adefioye Lagos
The International Cricket Council, the umbrella body for the sport has confirmed Nigeria in two of the body’s major activities in 2021 including Nigeria hosting one of them.
In a communication sent out over the weekend, Nigeria was listed as one of the key nations pencilled to vie for space for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2023 to be hosted in South Africa.
Nigeria women’s team, currently ranked 41st on the MRF Tyres ICC Women’s T20I Team Rankings has been drawn alongside; Botswana, Cameroon, Namibia, Malawi, Mozambique, Rwanda, Sierra Leone, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe in one of the qualifiers to be hosted by Botswana and scheduled for October 2021.
A spot for the finals of the ICC Women’s World Cup would be up for grabs from the Botswana center.
The other event that Nigeria was listed for on the ICC’s calendar is the qualifier for the Under-19 World Cup in 2022.
Nigeria would be hosting the final qualifying round for Africa in Abuja along with Namibia and Uganda. A fourth team for the final rounds would emerge from the first stage of the qualifier involving, Botswana, Kenya, Mozambique, Rwanda and Sierra Leone.
The first stage of the qualifying series would be hosted by Botswana in June before the last series that be staged by Nigeria later in September. Nigeria had qualified for her first ICC World Cup through the Under-19’s after 105 of documented Cricket history in Nigeria.
The campaign in Nigeria for the U-19 World Cup ticket in September 2021 will be an opportunity to keep the country at the global spotlight after the heroics from the maiden qualification.
President of the Federation, Professor Yahaya Ukwenya has said Nigeria is well aware of the developments and would soon make public the training agendas of the two teams that will be doing these campaigns.
“We have a plan we are working with and we believe the input of our new Head Coach will add to the quality and especially execution. These two ICC events are very important to our developmental plans” he added.
World Cup winner, Asanka Gurusinha was unveiled by the Nigeria Cricket Federation as the country’s new head coach last week in Abuja, and his contribution is supposed to raise the chances of Nigeria at these international engagements.
