Kenya Face Ghana in U-19 Cricket WC Qualifier

By Richard Mwangi

Kenya will open their Under-19 Cricket World Cup qualifying campaign on Saturday against Ghana at the Nairobi Gymkhana from 9.30 am.

Next year's age group World Cup will be hosted by New Zealand from January 12 to February 4.

In the other fixtures, Uganda will face Botswana at the Nairobi Jaffreys. The four teams will fight it out for the single slot reserved for Africa in the world tournament.

The victorious side in Nairobi will join Namibia, who got an automatic qualification for being the highest ranked Associate team in the same event that took place last year in Bangladesh.

Botswana and Ghana qualified for the continental tournament after finishing amongst the top two teams in last year's Africa Division Two championship in Benoni, Gauteng, South Africa, that ran from September 10 to 18.

Other teams that took part in the championship were Nigeria, Sierra Leone, Zambia, Tanzania and Rwanda.

Ghana is the only side taking part in the World Cup qualifying without a Kenya-born coach.

Uganda have Frank Otieno, Botswana have hired Joseph Angara while Jimmy Kamande is the hosts team coach.

Commenting on their preparations, Kamande said: "The boys are physically and mentally prepared for this event. They have been in camp for 10 days where they underwent thorough training on bating, bowling and fielding."

Kenya's squad: Sachin Bhudia (captain), Maxwell Ager, Thomas Ochieng, Jasraj Kundi, Aman Gandhi, Yaksh Patel, Dennis Musyoka, Abishekh Chidambaran, Rahul Seedhar, Ankit Hirani, Yayant Mepani, Gerard Mwendwa, Aveet Desai (wk), and Sukhdeep Singh.

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