The captain of Nigeria’s men’s youth cricket team, Abdulkareem Gafar has predicted that the squad will qualify for this year’s ICC U19 World Cup.
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Sports247 gathered that the ICC U19 Men’s World Cup is billed for Namibia and Angola this summer, ahead of which Nigeria is set to host five other countries in the last round of qualifiers this weekend.
The qualification competition, which will take place at TBS Oval and University of Lagos cricket ground, will feature Uganda, Tanzania, Namibia, Kenya and Sierra Leone seeking to upstage hosts Nigeria from March 28th to February 6th.
Although the list of opponents appears to be quite formidable in the last gasp race to the International Cricket Council (ICC) global contest, Gafar is of a belief that he and his teammates have prepared well to emerge top at the end of all the qualification games.
Gafar stated, “We’ve been preparing for a couple of months. So, I believe we’ve come up to a standard and we are good to go. I also believe we are expected to be the favoutites to qualify.”
With only one country billed to qualify from the group, which looks very tight on paper, many critics have written Nigeria off due to the nation’s lack of precedents in the sport, but Gafar enthused that his team is capable of springing a surprise, starting with their first game on Friday.
“I’m sure we’re going to come out with good results. Though we’ll be playing against the big guys, I’m sure that … with the attacks we are building and data that we are going into … we can pull through. Our bowlers are there, and our batters are on top,” Gafar projected.
