The quadrangular cricket series that pitted two Ugandan select sides comprising of national team players, and a Kenyan select side, were won by Takashinga.
The club from Zimbabwe edged out Uganda’s first eleven by a net-run rate difference of 0.17. However, for many reasons, especially for confidence boosting, Uganda wanted to win these series grudgingly, although there was a lot more to winning, that came out of them generally.
Michael Ndiko, the national team’s assistant coach, said that as the technical team, they were impressed with the application of the players they chose to represent Uganda.
“You will look at a player like Brian Masaba and Arnold Otwani, who turned out for the second team, and you realize that they were quite competitive especially against opposition unfamiliar to them,” said Ndiko. In four games, Masaba scored 129 runs while Otwani notched 146 runs in five games.
Masaba and Otwani averaged 30 runs, which is promising. Ndiko explained that if the Cricket Cranes can have a batting line-up that averages 30 runs each, then the team can crank up at least 300 runs in 50 overs games.
Such a standing would put any team in a winning position at international level, where Uganda has struggled for the last five years. It is for that reason that Uganda finds herself in the less lucrative division three World cricket league.
Barring any major changes from the International Cricket Council, Uganda will be competing to qualify for the division two World Cricket league in May 2017. So, with a few more trial games, they should be ready and better by then.