The Yellow Greens of Nigeria maintained their winning start to the 2023 West Africa Trophy Cricket tournament on Thursday at the TBS Cricket Oval in Lagos as they defeated Sierre Leone by 63 runs.
It was Sierra Leone who won the toss and elected to bowl in the first innings, with their game plan being to unleash their bowlers on Nigeria in pursuit of their first victory in the tournament, after losing to Ghana on Wednesday.
The Choice of bowling first however became a blessing in disguise for the Yellow Greens as their batters were up to the task. They scored 155 runs in 20.0 overs with 6 wickets lost.
The eventual player of the match, Runsewe Sulaimon harvested 79 overs, with 9 boundaries ( seven 4s and two 6s) in the first innings.
With the seemingly high target for Sierre Leone, they came into the second innings with much to worry about.
The Yellow Greens came battle-ready, unleashing their bowlers who didn’t give their opponents any chance to breathe. They indeed restricted their opponents from gaining much advantage in terms of scoring runs.
Isaac Okpe bowled 2 wickets in 2.0 overs, Peter Aho also bowled 2 wickets in 3.0 overs. Also, Udekwe Chiemelie and Ridwan Kareem bowled 2 and 1 wickets respectively.
In the end, Sierre Leone had to settle for 92 runs after losing all wickets.
Nigeria will next square off against Ghana on Friday morning by 10 a.m.