NAIROBI, Kenya, April 19 – The national women’s cricket team captain Sharon Juma has encouraged her troops to step up in Thursday’s match against Tanzania in the ongoing Victoria Tri-Series T20 tournament in Kampala, Uganda.
The cricket queens suffered an embarrassing 47 runs-loss to Rwanda in their second match of the five-team tournament – the first time that their East African neighbours have defeated them in an International Cricket Council (ICC)-sanctioned T20 game.
“I think we will just need to apply ourselves more. As I said earlier, today we dropped the ball somewhere along the game. So, tomorrow, we will have to take it up a step…as well as improve on our batting because we know what Tanzania are capable of,” Juma said.
The Rwandese won the toss and chose to bat, amassing a total run of 88 in 14 overs with Henriette Ishimwe and Clarisse Umutoniwase topping the batting charts with 26 and 23 runs off of 18 and 26 balls respectively.
With Kenya chasing a target of 89 runs in 14 overs, the opening batting pair of Juma and Monica Ndhambi put up a gallant effort with the latter hitting a boundary from the onset.
However, immaculate bowling by Immaculee Muhawenimana soon broke up this batting pair as Ndhambi was dismissed for four runs off eight balls.
Juma soldiered on even as her next batting partner, Vanessa Ooko, was immediately bowled out by Muhawenimana.
Coming on to the field next was vice captain Esther Wachira who, along with Juma, provided an experienced pair of hands and briefly offered respite for the Kenyans as the skipper soon hit the team’s second four.
Nonetheless, Wachira was soon off the field of play after her attempted boundary was comfortably collected mid-air by Gisele Ishimwe.
With Kenya’s experienced batting order collapsing one by one, it was left to the young pair of Kelvia Ogola and Flavia Odhiambo to score 58 runs in five overs.
However, Odhiambo was soon heading off the pitch by way of lbw (leg before wicket), followed by Ogola who was bowled out by Ishimwe – with a total of 41 runs in 13 overs.
To add insult to injury, the Kenyans will have to make do without dependable player, Daisy Njoroge, who was stretchered off after spraining her knee in the first inning.
Juma bemoaned another bad day in the office for coach Francis Ndege’s charges.
“It was a bit unfortunate…we chose to field first and we managed to get that. We started well but we dropped the ball along the way. We should have chased that target but our batting order crumbled,” she said.
In an earlier match on Wednesday morning, Tanzania defeated the United Arab Emirates (UAE) by seven wickets.
