BOYS FINAL REPORT DAY 1

• North West begins defense title with a huge win against South East
• South-South wins against North Central in a nerve wrecking encounter
• Kingsley from South East scores first half century of the tournament

The National Under-17 Cricket Championship Boys Final, powered by PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) Nigeria, got off to a thrilling start in Benin City with 2 exciting games on match day 1. The winners North West and runner up South-South from last edition were seeded into 2 groups A1 and B1 with other teams balloted into both groups. 30 overs ODI format was agreed for the tournament in the group games and 40 overs in the Final.

Group A1

North West
South East
South West

Group B1

South-South
North Central

Day 1:

Match 1: (North Central vs South East)

North central won the toss and elected to field first thereby sending South East to bat. South East started brightly and raced quickly to 90 runs in 15 overs. North West clawed back into the game, restricting South East to a total of 126 runs all out in 23.2 overs

Kingsley Chukwuma scored 54 runs off 56 balls to register the tournament’s first half century, strongly supported by Ndubudem Elochukwu with 33 runs off 50 balls.

Kenneth Boniface and Theophilus Jeremiah of North West both had 3 wickets each.

In the second innings, North West chased down the scored to record a total of 130 runs for the loss of 5 wickets in 23.2 overs

Joshua Sunday scored 40 runs off 50 balls as the best performer with the bat for North West.

Theophilus Jeremiah was named player of the match.

North West won by 5 wickets.

 

Match 2: South-South vs North Central

North Central won the toss and elected to bat first, scoring a total of 96 runs all out in 27.4 overs.

Ismail Haffeez scored 31 runs off 48 balls.

Destiny Chilemanya got 4 wickets, conceding 12 runs in 5.1 overs, and Oyemba Isaac got 3 wickets, conceding 11 runs in 4.3 overs as the top bowling statistics for South-South.

The second innings was a nerve wrecking encounter with South-South opening the game at the early overs, but failed to establish a decent partnership as wickets fell every other over. In the end, South-South eventually crawled over the finish line to score 98 runs for the loss of 8 wickets in 16.3 overs.

Abdulfatai Abdulsamad from North Central got 3 wickets, conceding 21 runs in 4 overs.

Isaac Oyemba was named player of the match.

South-South won by 2 wickets.

TOURNAMENT FIXTURE
Day 2
Match 3: South East vs South-West (8:30am)
Match 4: North-West vs South-West (1:30pm)

Day 3- Semi Final.
Match 5: 1st of Group A vs 2nd of Group B (8:30am)
Match 6: 1st of Group B vs 2nd of Group A (1:30pm)

Day 4- Final.
Match 7: Winner Match 5 vs Winner Match 6. (9am)

Ends…..

 

*MUSA EHIZOJE BODIE
TOURNAMENT COORDINATOR*