Nigeria’s U19 male Cricket team will set the steam rolling with a 5-day training tour in Zimbabwe ahead of the ICC World Cup Qualifiers commencing in Namibia later in March.

The Junior Yellow Greens will face Uganda, Kenya, and Namibia in the Qualifiers from which countries will emerge to represent Africa at the U19 Cricket World Cup in 2020.

For President of the Nigeria Cricket Federation (NCF), Professor Adams Ukwenya, the Zimbabwe tour is very vital for the team ahead of the Qualifiers.

“There is need for us to play a more formidable team likened to the opponents that we will be meeting in Namibia because we are going to meet Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, and other countries.

We are hoping that Zimbabwe will give us a formidable team to play with so that we will know where we are lacking as per our weaknesses and where we could improve and hopefully after the five days training tour, we should be able to put our team technically together.”

Prof. Adams also commended the coach of the team for playing a pivotal role in ensuring Nigeria prepared adequately for the World Cup Qualifiers.

“He has been up and doing to see that our team does well,” He said.

Reacting to encomiums showered on him for his contributions to the team, Coach Uthe Ogbimi, arguably Nigeria’s most decorated Cricket player pointed out that the Federation’s support has been available to “make things work.”

He equally confirmed the tour in Zimbabwe was put in place to toughen the team.

“The idea of the camping is to ensure that our players meet up with supposedly superior opposition so that they can be stretched, perhaps, to their limit. They’ve got to raise their game.” He said.