Nigeria women’s U-19 cricket team coach Sarah Bhakita has said her minimum expectation from the team is to reach the semi-finals of the 2025 ICC Women’s U-19 World Cup which will be held from January 18 to February 2 in Malaysia.
Bhakita guided the Junior Female Yellow Greens to the tournament by picking Africa’s only spot from the regional qualifiers ahead of Zimbabwe and also marking the second time a Nigerian team will be playing at the World Cup.
In Malaysia, Nigeria will play Samoa, South Africa, and New Zealand in the group stages and hope to make the Super 6 stage which will produce the last four teams.
After two phases of camping in Nigeria, The Junior Female Yellow Greens are currently putting the finishing touches to their preparations at the OMTEX Cricket Institute in India before proceeding to Sarawak, Malaysia for their warm-up matches against Pakistan and Scotland.
They will face Pakistan on Monday, January 13, and Scotland two days later.
“I can say the preparations have been going on well. We haven’t stopped since we qualified and at some point, it was a bit too much for the girls and we had some rest and started again in November,” Bhakita added.
Nigeria will open its World Cup campaign with the first match against fellow debutants Samoa at the Borneo Cricket Ground, Sarawak, Malaysia.
They will face test nation New Zealand in their second game of the tournament on Monday, January 20, and South Africa in the last group game two days later.
