After a very rainy Sunday that halted activities, Monday morning was different as the skies were clear in the city of Dar es Salaam, the Capital City of Tanzania where the Yellow Greens were in action against Sierra Leone.
Before proceedings Kickoff, Sierra Leone Won the toss and elected to field first sending in Nigeria to bat.
Nigeria’s opening pair of Selim Salau and Paul Pam started quietly and just when they were starting to settle in, Selim fell in the 3rd over with Nigeria on 10 runs. Damian Okeke joined Paul in the middle to try and rebuild the partnership.
The next five overs were quiet from both sides, with no wickets and Nigeria managing just 10 runs. After the 10th over, Nigeria were 23 runs for the loss of 1 wicket.
The first boundary came in the 11th over off the bat of Damian Okeke as the partnership continued to blossom. Nigeria lost the wicket off Paul Pam in the 12th over with Nigeria on 28 runs, that wicket introduced the captain of the team, Ridwan Abdulkareem.
At 41 runs in the 14th over, Damian fell off a top spin, just when Nigeria was getting into the groove. Solomon Chilemanyan looked comfortable coming in at Number 5, taking Nigeria to a drinks break on 45 runs after 18 overs.
Spinners proved too tough for Nigeria as Nigeria lost their captain immediately after the drinks break. Wickets kept tumbling with David Abibhode the next to be gone through spin. Prosper Useni came in as the 8th batter to be dropped at the long-on boundary off his fistball. It didn’t take much anyway and Prosper was stumped out.
It didn’t look too good for Nigeria, the team has to depend on the tail-end batters to come through if they were to put up any decent total.
Nigeria managed to record a meagre score of 73 runs all out in the innings.
Nigeria, hoping for a bright start in the second innings had Prosper and Chiemelie open the bowling.
Sierra Leone was mature in their approach and stayed solid in defence for the first 5 overs with 15 runs on the board for no loss.
Nigeria continued to dig deep but Sierra Leone was desperate for the points, bragging rights and a chance to sit on the top of the table.
The game turned out to be pretty much one-sided and Sierra Leone scored freely to reduce the deficit by half by the end of the 7th over.
Nigeria made it easy with dropped catches in a game where half-chances should be taken.
In the end, Sierra Leone made light work of the run chase by scoring the required total of 74 runs for the loss of 1 wicket in 17.5 overs.
Sierra Leone Won by 9 wickets.
Raymond Coker of Sierra Leone was named player of the match.
In another game today, Host Tanzania lost to Namibia by 104 runs.
Nigeria will resume hostilities tomorrow against Uganda by 6:30 am Nigerian time.
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