By: Mohamed Abu Conteh
Taking stock of the cumulative progressive made over the period of three hundred and forty days, the Sierra Leone Cricket Association has defined 2022 as a year of success amid non-government intervention.
The Association was able to organize eighty-five percent of its domestic leagues from which it identified young talents and developed new ones.
Early 2022, it trained 200 PHE teachers (out of the proposed six hundred). One hundred emerged from the East and 100 from the South to learn basic cricket skills and to familiarize themselves with the conduct of the ICC Criio Facilitators Programme.
It trained 57 cricket development officers and ran Cricket Coaching Clinics and Cricket Festival for thousands of school kids in the South, Western Area (Urban and Rural) and North-Western regions.
The SLCA went on to transform the Prince of Wales grounds from turf pitch (the initial aim) to a concrete one since the field does not exclusively cater for cricketing activities.
Its athletes successfully participated in four international tournaments covering the men’s senior and junior sides and the women’s senior and junior squads, securing qualification to the Africa Division 1 from the Men’s Under-19 side.
Sierra Leone qualified for the first time to participate in the ICC Women’s Under-19 T20 World Cup Qualifier following success from its consistent and inclusive domestic leagues (all tiers).
In the run to increase the number of female playing the game, SLCA organized a cricket funfair titled ‘100 Percent Women’s Festival’ in June this year at the Kingtom Police Field.
The programme attracted over five hundred female participants drawn from different communities in Freetown. Cutting across age 6 to age seventy, the event allured parents and their children for the first time since the start of the year.
The aim was to celebrate women’s cricket in a funfair way and to increase their number in the same breath. The event enticed participants to follow cricket either as fans or as players.
This was part of SLCA’s strategic programme to inspire participation and to conceivably meet ICC growth benchmarks.
To bolster the work of batsmen and to improve overall cricket performance, SLCA partnered with the Philadelphia Adults League Softball (PALS) to engage over one hundred and fifty participants drawn from different backgrounds and age brackets on the basics of softball and baseball.
Thrilled by its novelty and its skill-packed movements, the enthralled attendees vowed to keep the games playing even after the departure of the strangers.
On traveling for education, SLCA sent three participants to South Africa to participate in the ICC Capacity Building training. It sponsored one coach to participate in Cricket level 2 coaching course in Rwanda. Another was sent to South Africa to take part in the ICC Tutors Training programme.
Amid all this, the SLCA ran through financial constraint as Government has not been able to chip in even with a dime for four years after all the cries and wild appeal.
For the year 2023, SLCA plans to embark on high performance training. It has plans to continue with the FBC and Sussex projects, which it hopes to deliver before the rise of 2025.
It is looking forward to sending the Under-19 Men’s Team to India or West Indies for high performance training. It is looking forward to putting players on contract to keep them fully busy playing cricket. It is looking forward to adding more domestic leagues and to attract over 200,000 participants in schools. It is part of its plans to train five hundred PHE teachers.
On the competition side, its ladies will start the year 2023 at the Nigeria Women’s Invitational T20 Tournament slated for mid-March before setting off for the ICC Women’s Cricket T20 World Cup Qualifier in June. Its Under-19 boys will register participation in the ICC Men’s Under-19 World Cup Africa Division 1 Qualifier in Tanzania in July.
Finally, the Senior Men’s Team will travel to South Africa in August to participate in the Africa Premier League and the Africa T10 League.
SLCA Media Department