By Bockarrie Allieu
FREETOWN, Aug 3 (SALONE TIMES – 232news.com) – At end of March this year, the Women’s national Cricket team travelled to Nigeria to take part in the Nigeria Cricket Federation International Women’s T20 Series in Lagos.
Before their departure, the association tried hard to source fund from the government, Business houses and individuals but it was only Access Bank and MKF who came to their aid with financial support.
Access Bank supported the team at that time with Le20M (Le20, 000) cash while MKF gave them Le10M. Receiving the cash, the Director of Female Cricket Elizabeth French who also led the delegation to Nigeria told them that they will surely make good use of the money to win laurels and present it to them.
In Nigeria, the team fights hard and win the 3rd place trophy and bronze medals plus three Women of the match trophies.
Back home, the team presented the laurels to the management of Access Bank. The Director of Female Cricket said they have all reason to thank Access Bank because had it not being for them, they wouldn’t have taken part in the competition.
She went on that as promised, they are again at the Bank to present the laurels they won and appealed to them to do more for Cricket.
In his statement, the Country Managing Director of Access Bank Ganiyu Sanni thanked the team for their hard work.
He went on that he wasn’t expecting such performance from the ladies as they thought it was just a support to enable the ladies to take part in the tournament.
He went on that when he heard that they have won the 3rd place trophy among the five countries that participated in the competition he was supper exited.
The Managing Director said Access Bank started operation 12 years ago and since then they have a program to support children in the schools which started during the COVID period and Cricket being the first sports they have supported.
He went on that the Bank encourages sports, a reason he said they have football male team that have won several friendly matches, and they go to the beach to play football and do other exercise over the weekends.
This, he said is the reason why they deliberately employ young people at the Bank. The head coach of the team Sarah Johnson giving brief statement on the team’s performance said they struggle to take part in the tournament due to the lack of finance. She went on that it came to time when they were not sure if they will take part but said due to the support from Access and with their hardworking Chairman they finally made it to Nigeria.
The team arrived in Nigeria on March 27th 2022 and the next day they engaged Nigeria in the opening match with fatigue telling on the players.
But notwithstanding, she said they redoubled their effort to win the third-place trophy with bronze medals plus three women of the match awards.
Among those who won the women of the match awards are Fatu Pessima the youngest player among them who won two women of the match awards and was the second highest wicket taker in the tournament.
Mabinty Sankoh won one. Mabinty King the open batswoman make a record batting from the first ball to the last ball with 56 runs in one of the matches and ended as the second highest runs scorer in the tournament.
