Rwanda proved too strong for the Female Yellow Greens of Nigeria as player of the match Marguerite Vumiliya guided her team to a comfortable victory by 39 runs in an NCF Women’s T20 Invitational tournament encounter on Saturday. The feisty Match Day 6, which brought together two teams with great cricketing abilities and friendly rivalry, was set with both teams winning their opening three games ahead of this encounter. Rwanda are defending Champions and Nigeria are their biggest threat to unseat them. The match started as predicted with beautiful bowling and sublime batting to the amusement and appreciation of all. Gisele Ishimwe and Sarah Uwera were in control to ensure that Rwanda were comfortable on 41 runs for no loss in 6 overs of power play. Nigeria, finally got the breakthrough with the fall of Uwera’s wicket on the first ball of the ninth over. Henriette Inshimwe could not reproduce her efforts from the last game as she fell to just 8 runs. Celebrations were still on the minds of the Nigerian team when Gisele Ishimwe lost her wicket off the first ball from the leg spinner Adekunle Shola. At the end of the 14th over, Rwanda was 74 runs for the loss of 3 wickets. Not taking anything away from the superb bowling from Nigeria, Rwanda continued to battle and fought through and with some level of experience and maturity to grind home a total of100 runs for the loss of 7 wickets in 20 overs. Sarah Uwera scored 20 runs off 29 balls, Gisele Ishimwe 29 runs off 34 balls and Bimenyimana Marie 11 runs off 14 balls as the best batting contributions for Rwanda. Adekunle Shola was unbelievable with the leg break spin as she took 3 wickets, conceding 10 runs in 4 overs. In the second innings, Rwanda courageously opened the bowling with spin and was very impressive in its delivery, restricting Nigeria to just 23 runs for the loss of 3 wickets after the power play overs. Salome Sunday tried to fight back with some impressive strokes and boundaries, but wickets fell on the other end to diminish any chance of a meaningful partnership. Salome eventually fell and the onus rested on Lucky Piety to come good with the bat but the story was the same as Nigeria lost 5 more wickets in 3 overs. Nigeria eventually finished with a disappointing total of palsy 61 runs all out in 16.4 overs. Salome Sunday was the only iota of light in the Nigeria batting line up with 29 runs off 37 balls. For Rwanda, Vumiliya got 3 wickets, conceding 20 runs in 4 overs strongly supported by Josiane Nyirankundineza with 3 wickets, conceding 19 runs in 3.4 overs.
