The International Cricket Council, (ICC) has confirmed Nigeria in two of the body’s major activities in 2021 and also awarded the country hosting rights for one of them.
In a statement by the international body, Nigeria was listed as one of the key nations listed to compete for space for the ICC Women’s T20 World Cup 2023 scheduled to take place in South Africa.
Nigeria women’s team, currently ranked 41st on the 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 place for the finals of the ICC Women’s World Cup will be up for grabs from the tournament in Botswana.
The other event that Nigeria is meant to participate 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.
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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.
Last week in Abuja, the Nigeria Cricket Federation unveiled World Cup winner, Asanka Gurusinha as new head coach and his contribution and a major assignment for him is to make Nigeria competitive at these international engagements.
Last year, Nigeria made history by qualifying for the first ICC World Cup through the Under-19’s after 105 years of documented cricket history in the country.
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.
