Moorosi Tsiane
PATELXI and United11 cricket clubs will this morning lock horns at Maseru Race Course as they vie for the last spot in the National T20 tournament.
Lesotho Cricket Association Media Liaison Officer Clifford Molefe said today’s game will be a catch up match after the Indian players in the sides were given a break because they were fasting when the qualifiers were played last weekend.
The winners in today’s tie will join Linare, Ajax and Cannibals for the tournament which will be played on dates that are yet to be announced.
Molefe said the tournament will only feature senior male teams and is still part of the LCA’s efforts to promote cricket in the country.
“This is a national tournament and will be played by senior male teams,” Molefe said.
“It is meant to promote local cricket especially because this is the mandate from the ICC. All departments need to improve from the players, administrators and umpires.”
Molefe said LCA has seen made positive strides towards their goal and mandate from the ICC which is to ensure the growth of cricket.
“We have a mandate from the ICC and this kind of tournament helps us meet that task. The good thing is that we are getting all the support from the ICC which is supporting the programmes that we have proposed.
“Among the programmes is youth development, sports organisers and journalists’ seminars. We are planning to go to the districts in schools and the communities to grow the sport. We report to the ICC on the 5th of every month on what we did, achievements and the challenges faced.”
He said the tournament was not played last year due to financial constraints adding that they are also introducing a new format of T20 this year.
“Last year we did not play due to the lack of funds and also in the past years, we were just playing ordinary tournaments and not in the T20 format, so it is new this year. The reason for which we have changed the format is because it was expensive for the teams because they would travel long distances multiple times as the tournaments would take several days unlike the T20 which takes just one day. So that strained our already burdened teams which are struggling to make ends meet,” Molefe said.