NCF To Expand West Africa Trophy

Presidentof the Nigeria Cricket Federation, Uyi Akpata, has vowed that the next edition of the West Africa Trophy will attract more rewards for participating teams following the success of the first edition in Lagos.

Nigeria won the four-nation tournament on Sunday at the Tafawa Balewa Cricket Oval with a 17-run win over Rwanda in a thrilling final after Sierra Leone had also snatched a six-wicket win from Ghana in the third-place match.

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Akpata was thrilled by the teams’ impressive display and described the showdown as a perfect platform to expose the national teams as they prepare for the T20 World Cup qualifiers.

“It is a very successful experiment. We are glad to have the national team that complimented all our efforts with a sterling performance.

“For us, after five years, great cricket has come back to stay in the West Africa region and I was talking to the players a few days ago, I told them next year is going to be bigger and better and there I’ll be prize money. That’s why we brought the sponsors and potential sponsors here. They’ve agreed that they will put in a special prize money next year,” Akpata affirmed.

“We have had 10 excellent days of excellent cricket. Everyone has worked so hard for this, so, I want to thank the organising committee.  We also have a number of our partners to thank, including Dafabet, Sparkle, Nigeria Breweries, and Lagos State government. We are hoping we would be able to engage more of our corporate partners in the project of promoting the game of Cricket across Nigeria,” the NCF president added.

For this year’s edition, every player who won the Man of The Match award in the 20-game series was given $50 each while all the players who won the positional awards and made the team of the tournament went home with $100 each.