Nigeria lose to Zimbabwe, eye cricket bronze

The Female Yellow Greens have vowed to come back stronger and make a claim for the bronze medal in the women’s cricket event at the ongoing African Games in Ghana, when they take on Uganda in the third-place match at the Achimota Cricket Oval on Wednesday, PUNCH Sports Extra reports.

Nigeria lost the second semi-finals by five wickets on Monday after going shoulder-to-shoulder against test nation Zimbabwe.

Captain Blessing Etim won the toss and elected to bat against the 13th-ranked nation in the world but that didn’t quite go well in the first innings as they were limited to 74 runs for the loss of nine wickets in 20 overs.

Zimbabwe needed 16 overs to beat the target but not without Peculiar Agboya, Christabel Chukwuonye and Shola Adekunle taking five wickets from them.

“A big congratulations to the ladies, I am so proud of them and we will do more next time. No time to rest, we will go back to training immediately to correct some errors in our batting, then we come stronger to play Uganda on Wednesday,” captain Etim said after the game.

Zimbabwe captain, Mary-Anne Musonda also admired coach Leke Oyede’s ladies fighting spirit.

“I’ll say every one of them were fantastic because if they hit one run, they are really cheering one another and I think even with their age, they have a bright future and their team chemistry is really impressive.”

Nigeria’s opponent in the third-place match Uganda are ranked 18th in the world and lost by 50 runs to South Africa in the other semi-finals.

Nigeria in 27th are the lowest ranked team in the competition which debuts at the Games this year and they have weathered the storm to get near the podium by coming second in Group A which had the best team in Africa, South Africa, Namibia and Tanzania.

To qualify out of the group, they drew Tanzania, upset Namibia by a massive 55 runs and lost to South Africa.