Ghana have lamented the inability of their batters to come to the party following a hat-trick of defeats against Nigeria and their fourth loss at the ongoing West Africa Trophy tournament at the Tafawa Balewa Cricket Oval in Lagos, The PRIMANEWS reports.
Yellow Greens right-hand batter, Ademola Onikoyi, put up a strong show as Nigeria rallied from a slow start to beat Ghana by five wickets for their seventh win of the tournament on Wednesday.
The Ghanaians put up a great show in the first innings with 109 runs in 20 overs, leaving Nigeria to chase a target of 110 runs.
After a slow start, which saw Sulaimon Runsewe and Daniel Ajekun bowled out in the early stages of the second innings, Onikoyi and his teammates left it late against the Ghanaians, as he hit two sixes in the 17th over, which propelled the Yellow Greens to the targeted 110 runs with two overs to spare.
The win completed a treble for Nigeria over their archrivals in the tournament, having beaten them in their previous two meetings in the series.
Ghana’s opening bowler, Godfred Bakiweyem, said they hoped for a win over hosts Nigeria but added that the game took a different turn in the closing stages.
“Well, it’s the game of cricket, while we were training back home, our batting was clicking while our bowling wasn’t really doing well. But here, we have been struggling with our batting and the bowling has been right so far,” Bakiweyem told The PRIMANEWS.
It’s painful we couldn’t get one over Nigeria but we will go back to the drawing board and see what we can get in our next two matches. Hopefully, it will be enough to get us another meeting with Nigeria in the final.”
Ghana have three wins from seven matches and their hopes of reaching the final is hinged on their crucial tie against Rwanda on Thursday (today), as well as their last round-robin game against Sierra Leone on Saturday.
Nigeria remain unbeaten after seven games with two more games to go against Sierra Leone today and Rwanda on Saturday.
The top two teams from this stage will faceoff it in the final on Sunday October 15.