NCF Women’s T20i: Female Yellow Greens are Cricket Champions, Salome heroine as Rwanda succumb

By Akanimo Kufre

At last, the Nigeria female cricket team, the Yellow- Greens on Palm Sunday celebrated over rivals, Rwandaat the TBS, Lagos as Cricket Champions. The excited girls could not stop jumping, running around and shouting for nearly half an hour.

This moment has eluded the Nigerian girls since 2019 when the tournament had its first edition. For two seasons, elegant Rwanda girls were champions and in 2023, on the verge of winning the trophy for the 3rd consecutive time but was stopped by the spectacular efforts of Salome Sunday and Piety Lucky.

Nigeria defeated Rwanda by 9 runs to lift the title. The 3rd edition of the Nigeria Cricket Federation, (NCF) Women’s T20 International Cricket finals was marked by intense drama as the two rivals dragged the trophy until the 20th over of the final match.

Nigeria sweats it all to defend her 99 runs for a loss of 4 wickets. While Rwanda’s chase was stopped at 90 runs for 9 wickets.

It took the special bravery of Salome Sunday who batted more than half of Nigeria’s total, 48 runs to give Blessing Etim’s side the required target to defend, 99 runs.

Rwanda in the second inning chased 100 at a greater speed with Gisele Ishimwe adding 31 runs off 48 balls. But the Nigerian girls did all they could in the fielding tactic to slow Rwanda’s big guns like Sarah Uwera, Henriette Ishimwe, and Marguerite Vumiliya. They were successfully hacked down by bowlers Piety Luck and Rachael Samson who dismissed 3 wickets each.

Piety Lucky was lucky enough to win the Player of the Match award, on CricHero thanks to her 3 dismissals and 11 runs contribution to Nigeria’s historic victory. However, on the field the star performer for Nigerian female cricket, Salome Sunday was crowned Player of the Match.

As expected, the happy Nigerian girls would never care who took which award as their ultimate goal was to break the jinx and have a bragging right as Champions over perpetual winners Rwanda.