President of the Nigeria Cricket Federation (NCF), Mr. Uyi Akpata, yesterday said the ongoing Nigeria-Ghana Under-19 Women Series at the University of Lagos Cricket Oval is designed to test the federation’s development effort for women’s cricket.
The four-team invitational, which commenced on September 8, has on parade Ghana’s Under 19 national team, the south-west female team, a selected national women’s team and Nigeria’s Under 19 women’s team.
“Apart from getting the women’s under 19 team in shape for the Division One World Cup Qualifier starting next month in Kigali, this tournament allows us to test the depth of our women’s development. For the first time, we are parading three teams of national team quality, in addition to Ghana’s under 19 women team,” Akpata said.
“The strategic objective of the federation is to attain gender equality in its developmental effort. We have had our school outreaches focused a bit more on girl-child initiatives and it has been yielding results while the impact is beginning to resonate,” he also said.
The female national team put up a podium performance at the African Games in Accra earlier this year, winning bronze and justifying the investment in Nigeria’s female cricket development.
“We now have a female Cricket League run in the south-south, with eight teams taking part, and a fully functional cricket facility inside an all-girl Iyoba College in Benin City, Edo state,” Akpata further said.
Meanwhile, the World Cup Qualifier is scheduled for September 22 to 29 at the Gahanga Cricket Stadium in Kigali, Rwanda where Nigeria has been drawn in Group B of the eight-team series that parades Zimbabwe, Tanzania and Malawi. Group A has Rwanda, Namibia, Uganda and Kenya.
Bauchi State Ministry of Youths and Sports Development has dropped additional 45 athletes from the initial 212 member-contingents of the state for the ongoing national youth games taking place in Asaba, Delta State.
The Overseeing Director of the State’s Sports Council, Ahmad Kawu Aliyu made the disclosure while addressing the second batch of the state contingent in Bauchi.
Ahmad said the decision followed the directive conveyed to him by the acting Permanent Secretary of the ministry, Nasiru Usman, conveying the reduction due to some reasons not revealed to him.
He explained that the situation has affected athletes and individual events, coaches, association secretaries and some other officials of the sports council.
Some of the athletes interviewed, Muhammad Abdulrahman and Nura Abubakar who spent two days at the premises of the State Sports Council waiting for the commencement of the journey to Asaba, expressed sadness for the last minute drop.
Others, particularly on Weight lifting and Basketball male teams from which the state is expected to win gold medals following past records, described their exclusion as a sabotage to government efforts in sports development.
