Nigeria’s U-19 women’s cricket team, the Junior Female Yellow Greens, are intensifying their preparations as they get ready for an extended training period ahead of the 2025 U-19 T20 World Cup Qualifiers.
This comes after the tournament’s rescheduling, which will now take place in Kigali, Rwanda.
The upcoming tournament, marking its second edition, is scheduled to run from January 8 to February 2, 2025, in Malaysia, featuring a lineup of 16 teams.
Originally, Nigeria was set to compete in a two-group format, each group comprising seven teams.
However, the last-minute inclusion of Zimbabwe led to a reorganization, with the top four teams opting out to form a separate division.
Based on their current rankings, the Junior Female Yellow Greens now find themselves in Division 1 of the Africa Qualifiers.
This division kicked off in Rwanda on Wednesday, with seven teams (Botswana, Eswatini, Kenya, Lesotho, Malawi, Mozambique, and Sierra Leone) battling it out in a single round-robin format in Division 2.
In Division 1, Nigeria will be competing against formidable teams from Namibia, Rwanda, Tanzania, Uganda, and Zimbabwe.
This stage of the qualifiers is set to take place from September 23 to 29 in Kigali. The top two teams from Division 2 will join the Division 1 teams in the final tournament.
The victor of the Division 1 qualifier will earn Africa’s second spot in the World Cup in Malaysia.
The winning team will join the hosts of the previous edition, South Africa, alongside New Zealand and newcomers Samoa in Group C of the World Cup finals.
The Nigerian team has been intensifying their preparations at the Nigeria Cricket Federation’s High Performance Centre in Benin City, Edo State.
Their final training sessions will be held in Lagos before they depart for Rwanda.
