Author: SULEIMAN JONGO
AfricaPress-Tanzania: TANZANIAN cricket status has made a sky-high leap globally as depicted through the International Cricket Council (ICC) Women’s Twenty20 International (WT20I) and the country is breathing fire behind neighbours Uganda and Kenya.
The development comes after several decades of struggling, putting Tanzania in the seventh place in Africa, but 44th globally, according to the latest ICC rankings.
The ranking development is in awake of 2019’s brave performance that the local ladies put in the Women’s Twenty20 International (WT20I) Kibuka Peace tournament held in Kigali, Rwanda when Tanzania defeated several other African countries to emerge winners.
That was the second WT201 tournament for the local ladies to participate after taking part in the other event held in Zimbabwe at Takashinga Club.
Historically, the women’s team played their first internationals as part of the African regional qualifiers for the 2009 Women’s Cricket World Cup held in December 2006, when they played Kenya, Uganda and Zimbabwe. They finished second in the tournament behind Zimbabwe.
In April 2018, the International Cricket Council (ICC) granted full Women’s Twenty20 International (WT20I) status to all its members including Tanzania. Therefore, all Twenty20 matches played between Tanzania women and another international side after 1 July 2018 are being considered as full WT20I.
The inclusion of the women’s team in the ICC global ranking is an indication that the local ladies have drastically improved, after several years’ of poor performances.
The local ladies have had a major participation in both Regional and ICC-Africa World Cup Qualifiers, but could not qualify at the expense of all time opponents, Kenya, Uganda, Namibia and South Africa when they meet.
Tanzania Cricket Association (TCA) Development officer, Hamis Abdallah has attributed the ‘ranking’ development due to the continued efforts taken by association across the country to promote women’s cricket in the country. Thanks for the TCA to recruit Kenyan four-time World Cup player, Steve Tikolo as national teams coach to sharpen the players.
“We have taken several steps to make sure that the women’s cricket gets developed to the international standards,” said Abdallah.
“The idea is to see Tanzania ranked among 20 top teams globally by 2020 to make sure that we climb up to top positions and qualify in major ICC tournaments,” said a former left-armed national team captain.
He said the local ladies will in November next year take part in World Cup Qualifiers-Africa region as part of the campaign to score points to the top of the rankings.
He said TCA has annually been organizing the Women’s Premier League with a view to promoting the sport by scouting new young players and develop the old ones to the best level of competitions.
South Africa is leading in the rankings in Africa, followed by, Zimbabwe, Namibia, Kenya, Uganda, Botswana, Tanzania, Malawi, Mozambique, Sierra Leone and Rwanda.
Globally, Australia is leading, followed by England, India, Pakistan, South Africa, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, West Indies and Pakistan. Tanzania globally stands at 44th place.
