Rwandan national female cricket head coach Leonard Nhamburo says his ladies worked assiduously to win the 2023 Kwibuka T20 Cricket Women's tournament that concluded in Kigali on Saturday. Rwanda saw off neighbors Uganda in the final by 6 wickets to win the competition for the first time since its inception in 2014. Obviously it is a good feeling that any coach will want to have, it has been nine years and this is our first time winning the trophy and it shows the hard work we have put in during this campaign. The trophy is something that we really appreciate, Nhamburo said after the victory. We have been preparing very well for this competition, if you look at the squad, lots of the players are from the U19 team which played at the world cup. We played tournaments in Nigeria and Uganda also and it helped us to be formidable. Saturday’s final victory was the first time ever that Rwanda beat Uganda since cricket arrived in the country two decades ago and Nhamburo mentioned that he took time to study the Ugandan team as they had already beaten his side before and he was able to turn the ties. We studied Uganda very well after losing to them previously, we got to know their strengths and weaknesses and we worked on how to capitalize on it. The more you play against teams, the more you understand their style of play and their approach,” the Zimbabwean explained. He noted that Uganda, “took it easy and thought it was a done deal but it turned out differently. Rwanda now turns attention to the World Cup qualifiers, a major test from which the girls hope to continue to prove their worth against the best on the continental stage. There are lots of programs that are coming in, there are the World Cup qualifiers that are coming up in December. We are going to meet teams like Uganda again and it also gives us an idea of where we are and where we can get to,” he said. Rwanda women cricket, through individual exploits from the likes of Henriette and Gisele Ishimwe as well as skipper Diane Bimenyimana, continues to take the African continent by storm and the country is among the best in the sport currently.
