Cricket: NCF Targets 1m Young Nigerians, Deploys Coaches To Schools  

Determined to achieve its set target of introducing one million young Nigerians into the game of  cricket across the 36 states of federation and FCT, the Nigeria Cricket Federation (NCF) has resolved to engage more coaches and train games masters and mistresses in the various schools.

This was part of the resolutions reached at its Annual General and Full Council Meeting 2022 held on Sunday in Abuja.

Speaking to newsmen on the sideline of the meeting, NCF vice president, Wale Obalola, said one of the key components of the current board of NCF is grassroots development and that could only be successful with effective training of the tainers.

He said the leadership of the NCF is also determined to enhance its data collection system in capturing grassroots activities.

“We had a lot of deliberations which bothered mostly on developmental programmes. We got to understand that our data collection system is still slow regarding capturing activities that are happening at the grassroots level. Now, we have found out ways to do that through our coaches, desk officials.

“About two years ago when we had this 360 initiative from ICC, the main drive was grassroots development. They set up a target for us which we were able to meet and now the new target set for us is to introduce one million cricketers into the game. While we are talking about data collection, there have been many activities around the states and local areas that have not been captioned or else the number of data estimates we have now would have risen to almost 500.  But now that we know where the shortcomings are from, we are set to address them by sending coaches and developmental officials to schools to achieve the target set for us by the ICC,” Obalola said.

He however appealed to corporate organisations and multi-nationals for support, saying its grants from the international body, ICC, is grossly inadequate to sustain all their developmental programmes.

“Another issue we are trying to sort out is the issue of putting more funds into the development by providing equipment for developmental officials and the competition especially at the grassroots level.

“The issue of finance is a serious challenge because we don’t have any source of funds apart from the international grants which are grossly inadequate for all our activities. So, we are calling  on corporate bodies, multi-nationals to come to our aid and help sustain the growth of cricket in Nigeria. We have covered almost 35 states of the country and how do we sustain if we don’t have enough funds. We need to have equipment, personnel, accommodate them and pay them allowances and if we don’t have enough funds to drive this development at the end we will not be able to sustain it.”

The cricket administrator also added that the AGM was to share ideas with stakeholders from other states and geo-political zones on the development of the game in the country.