Botswana’s senior men cricket team, Baggy Blues, this past week bagged four ( 4) wins in the Africa Cricket Association ( ACA) Southern Central T20 regional cup, to emerge winners of the tournament and qualify for the ACA Africa T20 finals.

Botswana brushed away the challenge from Malawi, Mauritius, Mozambique and Eswatini to claim the championship but even tougher challenge awaits in Kenya.

The team is expected to depart for Nairobi, Kenya today ( Wednesday) and take part in the International League T20 ( ILT20) tournament which is expected to start on the 9th of June, 20223 ( Friday) with the final slated for 23rd June, 2023.

The six ( 6) teams expected to feature are the hosts, Kenya, Botswana, Rwanda, Tanzania, Nigeria and Uganda.

Local team head coach, Joseph Angara has told this publication that they will take each game as it comes with a top three ( 3) finish the ultimate goal.

“Our preparations began in February with a two ( 2) day game and played the 50 over games before we came into the T20 games in South Africa. Those games allowed us to spend enough time on the wicket and enabled players to polish their skills and it has helped. Going forward, I know we are going to face teams which are ranked higher than us, but we are going to take each game as it comes. I know Kenya is strong, I know Uganda is strong, we lost to Tanzania last year and we will not take anything for granted and we are fully prepared,” Angara shared.

He highlighted that the team had a provisional squad of 35 players and they had to trim it down to 14, describing the exercise as ‘ competitive and interesting’.

The team also competed at the ACA Cup finals in Uganda last year and finished fourth after being eliminated by Tanzania in the semi- finals of the competition.

Angara added that they took some lessons from some of the disappointments last year and will be looking up to some of his star players to turn up and help the team to achieve their objectives in Kenya.

Last year against Saint Helena, Vinoo Balakrishnan became the 1st player for Botswana to ever score a T20I century, this past week in South Africa, Druvkumar Maisuria became the fastest player to 50 wickets in the T20 internationals.

“Druv has been really outstanding for the past four years; he’s been getting the highest number of wickets in almost all the tournaments that we went into, and getting the milestone of being the quickest player to get 50 wickets in the T20 games in the world; it is the biggest achievement for him and Botswana Cricket. As a coach, I take a lot of pride in seeing this kind of performance, I am proud, I’m humbled by what he has done and he has worked hard for it,” he said.

He shared that they will be missing some of their key players, including Karabo Molefhe who excelled in South Africa but the coach expressed optimism that their replacements in the team are well able to do the job.

Team captain, Karabo Motlhanka highlighted that the team is currently going through a transition as there has been lots of additions into the group.

“There is a lot of youth coming into the team of late, it is quite a transitional period for us but to learn that we can still pick up results and lift a trophy for the first time since 2018 makes me

very happy. The tour to Rwanda last year for the World Cup qualifiers was quiet disappointing so the recent tour to South Africa was actually very good for us because it allowed us to rectify; for example, a loss we had against Malawi last year, we corrected that. We are going to Kenya and we will meet all

the three teams that we lost to last year and we are looking forward to correct our previous results against them,” Motlhanka explained.

He concluded by adding that they are expecting a much tougher challenge, particularly from Uganda, Kenya and Tanzania.