Cricket: Nigeria wins 2nd West Africa Trophy

Nigeria has won the second edition of the West Africa Trophy Cricket tournament in Abuja.

Nigeria’s senior men’s team also known as the Yellow Greens defeated Rwanda by 40 runs to lift the trophy for the second time at the Moshood Abiola National stadium, Abuja.

Nigeria won the toss and opted to bat first, with each of the batters contributing significantly to the 157 runs posed by the hosts.

The home team made good use of the powerplay (first six overs), scoring 30 for no wicket lost after three overs.

The 30-run partnership between captain Sulaimon Runsewe and Rahmon Ali was broken in the fourth over after Ali was bowled out by Igance Ntirenganya of Rwanda.

Ali, who departed after scoring 11 runs off 10 balls was replaced by Selim Salau.

Salau’s 25 runs off 25 balls pushed Nigeria to 93 before he fell to the excellent bowling of Muhammad Nadir, with the ball piercing through the middle stump.

The middle order batters also complimented the openers as Isaac Danladi, Vincent Adewoye and Sylvester Okpe ensured the current run-rate was 7.85 an over.

Nigeria scored 157/5 in their allotted 20 overs.

In the chase, Rwanda started well, with a 50-run partnership of opening batters Khan Hamza and Didier Ndikubwima help to build momentum for the visitors.

However, just after powerplay, Hamza lost his wicket and momentum dipped for Rwanda as they required five overs more to score 20 more runs on board.

Efforts by fellow opener Ndikubwima 33 of 38 balls supported by Jean Iradukunda’s 25 off 23, who played not out, was not enough to save the day.

No thanks to the bowling prowess of the Nigerian side spearheaded by Issac Okpe, Joshua Asia and Elochukwu Ndudubem with two wickets each in their four-overs spell respectively.

They restricted the East Africans to 117/9 in 20 overs. Nigeria won by 40 runs.

Earlier, n the tournament, each team played nine games with Nigeria winning eight of those and losing just one to Rwanda, while the latter won six games, losing twice to Nigeria and once to Zambia.

On the other hand, Zambia won three of nine games while Sierra Leone finished bottom place with a win in nine matches.

The final on Sunday was the 10th game for Nigeria and Rwanda, as Nigeria wins to retain the title won in the first edition in 2023 in Lagos.

Notably, some individual performances were recognized as Nigeria’s Danladi was awarded Best Batter of the tournament scoring 324 runs while Rwanda’s Muhammad Nadir emerged the Best Bowler with 15 wickets.

Nigeria’s Isaac Okpe and Rwanda’s Emile Rukiriza closed in on second and third place with the same number of wickets but Nadir had a better economy than the duo.

Nigeria’s captain Runsewe received the Best Fielder honours with 11 dismissals in 10 games while Zambia’s Zoyeb Chand was recognized as the Most Valuable Player of the tournament.

Meanwhile, Zambia emerged third place after beating Sierra Leone by 20 runs earlier in the day .