Cricket U17: South-south wins double at NCF championship

Team south-south, the defending champion, has won the fourth edition of the PwC/NCF U17 cricket championship.

The south-south’s male and female teams showed sheer dominance on Sunday in Abuja by winning all games and eventually claiming the title — a fourth consecutive win for the ladies and the third for the male team.

The female defending champions pitched against the south-east with the latter winning the toss and opting to field.

The bowling effort of Faith Okpara 3/16 was not enough to limit the defending champion who raced to 133/5 in 20 overs.

The player of the match Piety Lucky 49(36) and teammate Peculiar Agboya 30(20) did the job for the south-south zone as they finished the innings on a high note.

In reply, the south-east managed to reach 67 runs/10 in 17.4 overs as Lucky earned a 4-wicket haul for 10 in 3.4 overs. South-south won by 64 runs.

The men’s game began with south-south winning the toss and electing to bat against north-west.

Abraham Oaikena 27 (33) and Godswill Effiong 28(29) did the most for the defending champion who scored 128 all out in 24 overs.

To win, north-west needed to score 129 runs but the likes of Unity Ogbide 3/16 and Effiong’s 5/6 were instrumental in restricting the northern side to 56/10 in 21.4 overs. South-south won by 71 runs.

Earlier, south-west defeated south-east by 17 runs in the boys’ event as well as north-west by 7 wickets in the girls’ event to claim the third place position.

Theophilus Ibodeme, coach of south-south, who praised the team’s performance, said: “Our hard work has paid off and hopefully we will keep improving on this feat. Other teams have really improved from the last time we met them and they gave us good competition.”