Nigeria will open their campaign against Rwanda on September 3 at the final qualifying tournament of the ICC Women’s Under-19 T20 World Cup in Gaborone, Botswana.
Nine African teams will battle it out to be the 16th team to book their tickets to the 2023 tournament to be hosted by South Africa.
Nigeria has been drawn in Group A alongside Rwanda, Tanzania and Malawi and Mozambique while Group B has Uganda, Namibia, Sierra Leone and hosts Botswana do battle.
Nigeria’s second group match will be against Tanzania on September while on September the team will slug it out against Mozambique on September 6 while their last group match on September 9 will be against Malawi.
The top two from each group will then go into semi-finals, before the winner of the final then celebrates a ticket to the World Cup proper in South Africa.
Meanwhile, for the first time in the history of the African Games, cricket has been included at the African Games, to be hosted in Ghana in 2023.
Eight women’s teams, and as many men’s teams, will compete in two groups of four, before the action moves into the knockout stages. Plans are already well underway to develop the facilities at Achimota, ahead of next year’s event.
The two powerhouses from the southernmost tip of Africa, South Africa and Zimbabwe, have also entered the race to be crowned African champions.
“This wonderful game brings so many good people together, and the Africa Games will be no different,” ICC Africa’s Patricia Kambarami enthused.
“Already, the PWC from Nigeria has come on board to assist the Ghana Cricket Association with the construction of the oval and surrounding facilities. Everyone is pulling together to make sure that cricket puts its best foot forward at the Games next year,” she added.