Obaseki’s sports development masterstroke through cricket

BY SAM EMEHELU

The 105 years record-breaking U-19 World Cup qualification in cricket by Nigeria in 2019 has carved a new level of interest for the sport among its youth as well as presented cricket as an easy reach for sports development experimentation.

Barely seeded, and deep in the second division rank of the African cricket league by the International Cricket Council (ICC) Africa’s classification, Nigeria was not the bookmaker’s choice for a World Cup ticket before the campaign started in 2019.

However, riding on some underestimated revival championed by Prof Adam Ukwenya’s team at the Nigeria Cricket Federation, the jinx-breaking feat has opened up new possibilities and developmental model that can be stretched, explored, rinsed, and repeated across the board. It is this feat that the Edo State government has leveraged on through the state’s Sports Commission which has Barrister Godwin Dudu-Orumen as chairman.

“Cricket in Nigeria today is an interesting case, the game’s response to developmental efforts in the state has been exceptional. First, it has to do with the passion, focus, and innovation that has been displayed by the team running the sport in Edo State and the willingness to run with developmental guidelines supported by government,” Dudu-Orumen, who has been working to replicate the success stories in Edo State, said.

“Second, I guess because they have within them a lot who have genuine grasp of the game’s local challenges. It was easy to come up with a model that caught-on for the game. We must admit that what they have can be improved upon and transposed to other sports,” he also said.

Edo State has shown interest in using sports and its values as a touchpoint for social, economic and even structural revival in the state.

Governor Godwin Obaseki has consistently posited that beyond active engagement, statistics of the state’s performance in sports over the years put it in an unusual advantage to lay a lasting structural reform around sports that can benefit its people and the entire country both in the short and long terms.

Dudu-Orumen says the story of hosting the national sports festival was hinged on the many-layered advantages that are embedded for the state and how it can be used as a developmental tool for other aspects of the economy.

“Governor Obaseki is very focused on tapping into the power of sports and that is why we have made the level of investments we made as well as being steadfast in the face of the odds presented by the pandemic.”

But while uncertainty surrounds activation of the larger sporting goal, there has been a quiet experimentation with a number of sports internally on the side, one of which is cricket.

According to Dudu-Orumen, “Cricket came easy for us, Edo State has some legacies and structures around the sport which we need to revamp. We have latent cricket power that we tapped into. But I think the biggest positives for cricket in Edo was the strength of manpower available, especially that of the current chairman Uyi Akpata and the team he assembled. Their vision and experience for grassroots development tie perfectly into what we have set as agenda.

“The state had interest in football, boxing, rugby, athletics, golf and a few others that we can use for our developmental modeling, but cricket has been far more available and cheaper because of the commitment, passion and alignment the Edo State Cricket Association had.”

Only four Edo-born players participated during the Under 19 World Cup qualification campaign, all of who are products of the developmental programme of the federation.

Two years down the line and Edo State Sports Cricket Association (ESCA), backed by the government alone, can field a national team of teenage cricketers that are ready to take on the world.

Uyi Akpata, chairman of Edo State Cricket Association who also sits on the national body too as vice president, has brought administrative insight and experience from his different turfs which includes his position as former captain of the Golf Section Ikoyi Club 1938 in Lagos; the biggest membership club in sub-Sahara Africa.

Akpata says the state has not predetermined to dominate but has only benefitted from two years of focused investment and support by the government through the Sports Commission.

“The government and some state based sports philanthropists, especially PETS Foundation, has come to our aid because some parts of the project need constant resources and facilitation which no aspect of the state is equipped with for now,” Akpata said.

“Our first call was developing our own unique programme and roadmap with all the projected benchmarks and timelines. We were very fortunate to have great resources from the government and support from the Sports Commission who were our direct report.”

With the right tools, the state empowered the ESCA to adopt Edo Boys High School as the first center for the experimental Cricket High-Performance Center; the first of such in the country.

“We needed to use the high-performance centre as our rallying point for the state cricket revamp,” Akpata also said.

The center, commissioned last year by Edo State deputy governor, Philip Shaibu, has simultaneously become a national asset as the cricket federation has adjudged it the best in the country, following the ongoing upgrade works on all major cricket ovals across the country.

Akpata said: “Beyond the center in Edo State, we set out to break the jinx around standard Turf Wicket construction in the country. This limitation has capped our talent development and the myth that we only needed some engineering sophistication to get it delivered in the country. So for a long time the best turfs have always been of concrete and this has hampered our play at international events.”

During the Covid lockdown, the federation staged a six-week online training with some turf experts from the International Cricket Committee, which culminated in the development of homegrown solutions for the age-long problems.

“We had support of the state and the sports commission and today what we developed has turned the state into the center for cricketing excellence. At the moment, we are working with other states to replicate these solutions. The University of Lagos Oval and the Tafawa Balewa Square Oval are adopting our solutions and should be open soonest.”

Aside from the Edo State’s team and developmental purpose, the high-performance center would be the rallying point for all national events and teams for a long time to come.

“Governor Obaseki has made the state the place to be if we want to condition our cricket teams for future international events,” Akpata further said.

Barrister Abraham Oviawe, Vice Chairman of the state’s cricket association who also oversees operations at the high-performance center, describes the progress achieved so far as hugely underrated.

“At the last National Under 17 Boys and Girls Championship, which the national body understandably hosted on the facility, the winning teams for both categories were predominantly home groomed players,” Oviawe said.

“These new players were just pure discoveries form the state programme. We also have a record breaker, a teenage girl, Piety Lucky, who recorded a century during the event. These are no flukes but the result of a well-orchestrated sports agenda.”

Apart from the Turf Wicket and the growing school-wide cricket campaign, the state runs two of the most active leagues in the country; the Edo State Cricket League and the South-South Female League. The latter is the first attempt at organizing a female league in West Africa.

The league factor has grown the developmental potential and has opened up the state further as the hub for talent hunting, nurturing and expressions.

According to Oviawe, “we have had some electrifying moments here throughout the leagues. The learning has been tremendous. But most importantly, our path for a structured cricket development has never been clearer through the support of the Governor Obaseki’s agenda and Barrister Dudu-Orumen for his depth of purpose.”

The first edition of the South-South Female League will be rounding off with a photo-finish Super Four on March 20 and 21 and most of the players on parade are first team players of the national team, with some that already have invites for trials and other undiscovered talents waiting to be spotted.

Nigeria will this year compete for spots at the Under 19 World Cup, with qualifiers already scheduled for Abuja in October. There are two other World Cup attempts by the male and female national teams too on the cards later in the year. The odds are that Nigeria will pick at least one of the final tickets, but the secret sauce may be what is served this weekend when the fireworks for the Super Four for the inaugural female league begin on the Edo Boys High School Cricket High Performance center in Benin City.

Sam Emehelu, a sports journalist, writes from Lagos.