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By Abiodun Adewale.
Nigeria’s male U-19 cricket team, the Junior Yellow Greens, have embarked on a training tour of India and Rwanda ahead of the next phase of the 2024 ICC U-19 Cricket World Cup qualifiers in Tanzania by July, The PUNCH reports.
The U-19 Cricket World Cup is scheduled for Sri Lanka next year.
The team departed Nigeria for India on Monday and will begin the training tour before putting finishing touches to their works in Rwanda.
The team had been engaged in series of camping in Benin City and Abuja under the guidance of the Nigeria Cricket Federation’s technical crew headed by the senior men’s coach and high-performance manager, Steve Tikolo.
The team secured qualification from division 2 to division 1 in October 2022 during the first phase of the qualifiers in Abuja.
Nigeria is targeting the only qualification ticket in the Africa qualifiers in Tanzania, and a repeat of the feat they achieved in 2019 when they qualified for the ICC U-19 World Cup, which was played in South Africa in January of 2020.
“This is the same plan for the 2023 qualifiers and that has necessitated the federation to take bold steps by sending the players and coaches on international tours ahead of the qualifiers. The Junior Yellow Greens for the first time will be touring outside the Africa Continent and India is the preferred destination for all the right reasons,” the NCF said in a statement on Monday.
“The team will go through high performance training and play a series of matches with selected franchise teams in Mumbai over a two-week period before returning home to continue preparations. Prior to the tournament, the team will also be touring Rwanda to get used to the East Africa weather conditions and also settle into competition mode, before flying to Tanzania for the tournament proper.”
Nigeria will face old foesUganda, Kenya, Sierra Leone, Tanzania and Namibia in a winner-takes-all contests in Tanzania.
