TheCable

Coal City Cricket Club has won the first edition of the Caesar Okogeri Club Cricket Championship in Enugu.

The three-day event was fiercely contested by 100 kid cricketers at the St. Patrick Secondary School, Enugu.

It featured St. Patrick Cricket Club, Rising Sun Cricket Club, UNN Cricket Club, and the eventual winner Coal City.

In the final match, Rising Sun CC was held to 56-run, all out, in 11.4 overs for a 25-run victory by Coal City CC to win the maiden trophy.

Odo Chigozie of Rising Sun CC was awarded the best bowler of the event with six wickets, while Ogbue Prince of UNN CC picked the batter honour after garnering 56 runs. Inyang Henry of Coal City CC was also picked for the most valuable player award, while Ude Amarachi was named young rising star of the event.

Speaking during the closing ceremony, Chika Okoro, the southeast zonal representative on the board of the Nigeria Cricket Federation, expressed his delight in the “quality of play and organisation of the tournament” which he said would drive the sport to “greater heights in the near future”.

“We would stop at nothing to encourage youth development of cricket in Nigeria and this kind of event only serves to encourage us as a federation,” Okoro said.

Ogbonnaya Okogeri, chairman of the Enugu State Cricket Association, said the event has been registered as bi-annual in the association’s calendar in honour of Caesar Okogeri, his dad who passed on in 1994.

“We thought of honouring the memory of my late dad with this event, which helps to galvanise the efforts being put up in Enugu state and its environs to further cricket development,” the chairman said.

“There is no better time to be fully engaged in the growth and development of the youth than now, and cricket has, apart from keeping a number of these kids away from vices, also handed them a platform for social and economic empowerment.”