Joel Ajayi 

The stage is now set as 5th Edition of the Nigeria Cricket Federation in collaboration with PricewaterhouseCoopers PwC National U-17 Cricket Tournament finals as representatives of six geo-political zones set to rumble in Abuja from today’s Thursday to be climax on Sunday.

The game will be played at Cricket Ovals inside Moshood Abiola National Stadium package B Abuja where expectations is very high as many talents will be discover.

The six geo political zones which includes, South-East, North-Central, South- South, North-West, North-East and South-West.

Speaking in a Press briefing ahead of the event on Wednesday in Abuja, the Secretary General of Nigeria Cricket Federation, NCF, Sani Muhammed  who represented the President of Nigeria Cricket Federation Uyi Akpata revealed that Federation’s target is to get more children into the game of cricket.

“This partnership with Pwc has helped many young people in Nigeria where many of them have been taken off the street to find life through cricket.”

He commended PricewaterhouseCoopers, PwC, for the support of the tourney that is motivating the Federation to do more for the development of cricket in the country.

“Your commitment, your partnership has been a major source of motivation for NCF.

”You all are aware that PwC has been supporting and the government is supporting they’re working hand in hand. All hands on deck we appreciate people that are supporting grassroots development and today some of the talents discovered in this tourney are now making country proudtMajority of the elite athletes that are in the national teams today, are from the grassroot level, so once more would like to thank PwC for a long, long time partnership that we had with them. Government is always here to give you more support or whatever means to see that this program goes on. 

 Speaking also, the representative of PwC, Mr Tolu Adeleke,  said  PWC target is to discover more talents that will be the best in the world.According to him the sponsorship is part of their corporate responsibility in empowering youths and taking them off the street.

“We are excited to be here again, we have been doing this for years to help the young Nigerians boys and girls.“Our goal at PwC is to solve societal problems, giving hope to the hopeless as well as getting the children off the street and giving them life.

“And we have seen tremendous growth in the game over the years, there were improvement in the number of states that take part as well as an increased in the number of players, We are happy to see talents developed over the years we will not relent we shall continue to get more talent developed.

“It been a great journey, we want the journey to continue as long as we are seeing positive change in the life of children.” He said

 While giving report on the growthand developmentof the tournament, the NCF Tournament Manager Bode Musa Ehizoje enumerated positive impacts of the tournament in the last four years as the number of participating states keep increasing.

He said for male it was 19 states that started but today 33 states while in Female category 29 states took part in the tourney.It will be recalled that, South Male and Female team showed sheer dominance in the competition, energed winner of 2023 edition.

It was the fourth consecutive win for the ladies and the third for the male team.

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