21 Sep 2016

Botswana U-19 boys cricket team arrived home on September 20, beaming with pride after finishing on position two at the  ICC Africa Division II Cricket World Cup (CWC) qualifiers held in Benoni, South Africa.

Botswana is now in Division 1 and the 50 Over event was made up of Botswana, Sierra Leone, Ghana, Zambia, Nigeria, Tanzania and Rwanda.

Team’s coach, Joseph Angara said in an interview that, his team did very well in the competition adding that losing their opening game against Ghana was not easy for them.

He however said for the team to re-group and win three games in a row was a big achievement and a clear indication that they had a very good fighting spirit.

Furthermore, the coach said beating the favourites Nigeria, gave them a sense of believe and motivation to go on with their ‘no retreat, no surrender’ attitude.

“The game was very fast. In fact, we cannot take anything away from Nigeria, remember they were the favourites to win the trophy,” he said.

The coach said qualifying for Division 1 was a motivation on its own adding that their mission and motto was to qualify and he was happy that they managed to fight to the end and ultimately attained their goal.“We finished on second position and there is a lot of work to be done. The boys need a lot of competitive games. We have to work on their fitness level, but I have plans for that and I will articulate that,” he said.

Conversely, team captain Tharindu Perera said they started off on a bad note by losing against Ghana with eight wickets.

“After that game, the boys were really down and I met with the coach to lift up their morale and we were lucky because we didn’t have a game the next day,” he said. Perera further said they had a very tight competition, since there was a situation whereby teams were tied on points, and it was Net Run Rate which would determine the winners.

He said both Nigeria and Sierra Leone had won their games and they were above Botswana with Net Run Rate, therefore there was a lot of pressure on them.

“We were playing against Zambia and they were all watching and cheering our opponents, we had our backs against the wall, but by the grace of god we managed,” he said. Ends