Cricket: First National Team Trial Match held ahead of ACA T20 Africa Cup

Ahead of the upcoming Africa Cricket Association’s (ACA) T20 Africa Cup Final in Johannesburg, South Africa, the Ghana Cricket Association (GCA) paused the New Year Invitational to allow the senior men’s national team, play a Trial match against selected sides of clubs in the ongoing T20 league.

The Senior Team Select first played against a mix of Karizma & Don Bruce (Accra select A) before engaging CSK & Swami (Accra select B) later at the Achimota Cricket Oval.

Accra select side A won toss in the first game and elected to field first. The Senior team scored 158/6 in 18 overs and limited the Accra Select A to 102/5 in 18 overs, winning by 56 runs.

Joseph Kwame Theodore (48-25), eventual Player of the match, scored 2 6’s and 6 4’s and a strike rate of 192.00, while team mate Devender Singh Malik (46-20), with same boundaries as Theodore (scored 2 6’s and 6 4’s) achieved a strike rate of 230.00. Rohit Makhija, captain of the Accra Select side, was among the top performers in the batting, scoring 41-35.

In the bowling figures however, Hari Prasad Mohanty of Accra Select Side A, took 4-0-28-3 while Obed Harvey of the national team took 3.0-0-15-2.

The Senior Team’s second game against Carel Super Kings and Swami (Accra select B) also ended in a 124-runs for the former after the Accra Select B won toss and chose to field first.

The Senior team scored a remarkable 214 runs for 4 wickets in 20 overs and restricted Accra Select B to 90 runs, all out in 18.4 overs.

Richmond Baaleri was the hero of the day with his great bowling skills that got him 3.4-0-19-4 with an economy rate of 5.18. In addition to the bowling, Richmond scored 31-23

Kelvin Awala 3.0-0-24-3 and Amoluk Singh 2.0-0-3-1 were the other top performers in the bowling figures.

There was a great partnership between Obed Harvey and Devender Singh from the 8.4 over till the 19.3 over, when Devender (76-37) was caught Out at Deep backward square leg by Arugugam Venkatesh from Navin Rabadiya’s delivery.

Obed Harvey (51-35) and Rexford Bakum (39-22) followed in the batting performance.

The trial matches which forms part of the Teams preparation towards the ACA Cup in South Africa will have another turn next Sunday, September 11, 2022.

Ghana is set to depart for South Africa on Tuesday, September 13, for the tournament that runs from September 15 to Thursday, September 22, 2022.

Ghana is paired in Group A and will play Uganda, Botswana and Mozambique.

Source: True News Ghana