By Bockarie Allieu
FREETOWN, Oct. 11 (SALONE TIMES) – The ICC Men’s T20 World Cup final stage will be hosted next year in Australia. The Sierra Leone Senior Male National Team has been invited to take part in the Africa regional qualifier that will be hosted in Rwanda next month.
In preparation for the above qualifier, Sierra Leone national male team the Patriot will travel to Nigeria on the 16 October 2021 where they will play six friendly matches with the Nigeria senior male team in Lagos.
After the friendly matches, the team will depart to Rwanda on the 31st October 2021. Sierra Leone falls in group B with Botswana, Cameroun, Mozambique and Tanzania.
Arriving in Rwanda, the team will train on the 1st November 2021 with captains of the participating teams taking a photo with the champion trophy together with a press briefing on the same day.
But while preparing for the qualifier, the team is faced with serious financial constraints and if the government did not step in they will end up withdrawing from the tournament.
The association needs funds to give allowance to the contingent and for some other expenditure like ticket and lodging for the additional contingent members.
According to the Chairman, ICC will only responsible to buy tickets, lodging and feeding for 14 players and 2 officials. He went on that recently when the female travel to Botswana they borrowed money from somewhere else with the promise from the government that they will reimburse them as soon as the team returns.
Back home, they have not received a dime from the government. But according to sources from NSA, they have long since tendered the entire budget document to Finance Ministry for approval and to disburse the money.
The association said if they did not get the money few days to their departure they will have no other alternative but to withdraw from the tournament as they will have no were to get money again already in debt of Millions of Leones to pay.
