Team South-South on Sunday in Abuja won in style the fourth edition of the PwC/NCF Under-17 Cricket Championships by claiming both the male and female titles.
The South-South team underlined their dominance of the competition by winning all games and eventually claiming the titles.
The News Agency of Nigeria (NAN) reports that it was the fourth consecutive win for their female team and the third for the male team.
In the final games at the Moshood Abiola National Stadium, the girls game saw the defending champions pitched against the South-East team who won the toss and opted to field.
The bowling effort of Faith Okpara 3/16 was not enough to limit the defending champions as they raced to 133/5 in 20 overs.
Player of 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, South-East managed to reach 67 runs/10 in 17.4 overs as Lucky earned a four-wicket haul for 10 in 3.4 overs for South South to win 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 champions as they 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 5/6 were instrumental to restricting the Northern side to 56/10 in 21.4 overs.
South-South thus won by 71 runs.
Earlier, South-West defeated South-East by 17 runs in the boys event, and North-West by seven wickets in the girls event to claim the third-place positions in both categories.
At the end of the game, Theophilus Ibodeme, coach of South-South lauded the team’s performance.
“I am very happy with the players and the performance. It showed that our hard work has paid off and hopefully we will keep improving on this feat.
“Also, appreciation to the other teams. They have really improved from the last time we met them and they gave us good competition,” he said.
At the end of the event, a number of individual awards were given to the deserving players.
For the girls, Aisha Aliyu from North-East emerged Best Behaved, while Precious Simon from North-West was the Best Fielder and Kehinde Amusan emerged Best Fielder from South-West.
The Best Batter award was presented to Chinemerem Ihezuo of South-East and the Most Valuable Player (MVP) was presented to Piety Lucky of South-South.
The boys event saw Abdullahi Ismail of North-West going home as the Best Behaved while Daniel Joseph of South-West was Best Fielder.
The Best Batter award was presented to South-West’s Wale Odukoya while South-South’s Joseph Omonkhobhio emerged the Best Bowler and Kareem Gafar from South-West the MVP.
The tournament which began on Thursday came to end on Sunday.(NAN)
Stay ahead with the latest updates! Join The ConclaveNG on WhatsApp and Telegram for real-time news alerts, breaking stories, and exclusive content delivered straight to your phone. Don’t miss a headline — subscribe now!
