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The Nigeria Cricket national team; the ‘Yellow-Greens” won her first match against Sierra Leone at the International Cricket Council (ICC) World Twenty20 Africa Qualifier ‘A’ tagged 2018 by 88runs .
The Sierra Leonian team won the toss of coin and elected of field at the start of the game, Nigeria batted first and scored165 runs for the loss of 6 wickets in 20 overs . Chimeze Onwunzulike scored 54 runs off 34 balls , Dotun Olatunji scored 49 runs off 35 balls while Ademola Onikoyi scored 26 runs off 24 balls.
Abubakar Kamara of Sierra Leone got 2 wickets off 23 runs in 3 overs , Solomon Williams took a wicket, played for 15 runs off 3 overs, Ibrahim Kamara took 1 wicket played for 23 runs off 4 overs
In the second innings Sierra Leone batted and scored total of 77 runs all out in 18.1 overs. Lasana Lamin scored 17 runs off 20 balls follow Ibrahim Mansaray who scored 15 runs off 23 runs while Yegbeh Jalloh scored 12 runs off 14 balls which was not enough to erased Nigeria’s 165 runs.
Bowling for Nigeria, debutant Mohammed Taiwo took 3 wickets played for 14 runs in 3.1 overs, Sylvester Okpe another debutant got 2 wickets played for 6 runs in 3 overs , Nigerian captain Chiemeze Onwunzulike also took 2 wickets played for 10 runs in 4 overs.
After the encounter, Golden Square Cricket Club of Australia, Saheed Akolade described the match as a great one adding that no stone would be left unturned and no team would be underrated but their target is to get one of the tickets to qualify for the Regional T20 tournament.
Akolade, the country’s fast bowler said the new board on ground also attributed to their high spirit on the pitch of play and starting with victory as a host country is a big plus to the team.
“We will take the match one after the other, not to be looking ahead of the match that is yet to be played but I am assuring Nigerians that we are back for good. The match against The Gambia tomorrow (Sunday) will be great but you know that T20 is such a difficult game but all the same, we will give our best.
“We have a lot of the youths in the team, we start on a good note, for me and some other guys coming back to Nigeria to take part in this tournament is for us to ensure that we get the ticket to the Regional qualifier after this event”. Said Akolade.
Nigeria captain, Chimeze Onwunzulike won the man of the match . Nigeria will slug it out against The Gambia tomorrow (Sunday).
Anthony Nlebem
