Author: MBONILE BURTON
AfricaPress-Tanzania: DATE has been set for the Tanzania Kabaddi Sports Association (TKSA) to unveil strong national men and ladies squads for the international matches.
Both teams will be named ahead of Africa Kabaddi Championship 2020 to be held at Mlimani City Mall Dar es Salaam from December 11th to 13th this year.
TKSA chairman Abdallah Nyoni told the ‘africa-press’ in the city yesterday that process to select squads is going on well for the association to announce who deserve to be the envoys.
“Everything is going on well and players are in intensive training, working hard to impress the technical team,” he said.
Nyoni said the technical team has been busy closely following each player’s progresses so as to select strong national teams.
“We have been closely watching the training in Dar es Salaam as we are near to name the teams, but it will be before October 15th ,” he said.
However, he said top players from other regions will later join players who are training in Dar es Salaam for a final selection. According to Nyoni TKSA will select 32 players, with each team comprising 16 players.
He said that the team will enter camp soon after selection to start preparation for the competition as the event’s hosts.
Dar es Salaam has been honoured to host the event for the first time in the history under the auspices -of Africa Kabaddi Confederation (AKC).
The championship will be in the national-team style for both men’s and women’s categories and it will be open to all AKC members.
“We are very proud that this tournament comes to Tanzania after the end of corona scare, which deeply affect all sports activities globally. We are lucky, as our country has been a safe place,” he said.
According to him, the popularity of Kabaddi has been increasing in Tanzania, hence by hosting it, the game will see a new dawn in Tanzania.
Other sectors to benefit from the event include tourism, business while also providing youth employment. Tanzania teams will battle it out against other teams from Kenya, Cameroon, Egypt, Mauritius, Siera Leone, Uganda and Zimbabwe.
According to Nyoni, they have also received requests from England, Malaysia, Taiwan, Iraq and India whose teams applied to compete as invited guests.
