Nigeria’s Men Cricket Team have emerged winners of the inaugural West Africa Cricket Trophy concluded at the Tafawa Balewa Square in Lagos on October 15, 2023.
The Yellow-Green completed a clean sweep by winning all their ten matches at the event.
The team routed Rwanda to 17 runs victory, their fourth win over the East Africa side during the twenty-match series that kicked off on October 4, 2023.
Nigeria had qualified for the finals of the West Africa Trophy after winning all her round-robin matches, which included playing Ghana, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda.
The tenth match was a placement that pitched Nigeria, with 18 points against Rwanda, who had the second-highest points (8) from four matches. Ghana also had four wins but had a lower Net Run Rate. The third-place match then pitted Ghana against Sierra Leone, who had only managed one win from nine matches for the third and fourth classification matches.
Sierra Leone snatched a six-wicket win from Ghana in the first match of the closing day of the West Africa Trophy, before Nigeria’s clinching of the Tournament Trophy with her tenth win.
The President of the Nigeria Cricket Federation on the inaugural West Africa Cricket Trophy, stated:
“It is a very successful experiment. We are glad to have the national team that complimented all our efforts with a sterling performance.
We have a number of our partners to thank, including Dafabet, Sparkle, Nigeria Breweries, and the Lagos State government. We are hoping we would able to engage more of our corporate partners in the project of promoting the game of Cricket across Nigeria.”
Nigeria’s Isaac Okpe emerged as the Most Valuable Player of the Tournament and bowler of the tournament with 17 wickets. Another Nigerian, Sulaimon Runsewe won the batter of the event, with 229 runs off ten games. He also won the fielder with nine dismissals from ten matches.
