The National Cricket Captain Emmanuel Kamara has disclosed to Awoko that the national team is in good spirits ahead of the division three Africa World Cricket League competition in Malawi slated for the 3rd to 7th October.
He said he feels very happy that they have appointed him as captain and the executive knows that he his up to such task and promise to deliver the goods.
He also stated that the executive has selected 14 players for the competition, adding that he has played with most of these players over the past five years and he knows their strength and what they are capable of doing.
The players he said have started demonstrating their capability during training showing that the future of cricket is bright.
Emmanuel also revealed that Sierra Leone is rated better than a lot of other countries that are expected to participate in the competition, and that is why he is convinced that nothing can stop them from winning the competition, which will also automatically qualify the country to associate level and put the country in the map of cricket in the world.
The National Cricket Captain maintained that he has no doubt about his colleagues who have been focused and determined during their training session both in the morning and afternoon because most of the other countries they started playing cricket with have already become associate members.
When asked what are his challenges he said his first challenge is to make such that he brings the players together so that they can work in unity for the development of the game. The other challenge is discipline that is if a player is not disciplined he will not be able to achieve his full potential in the game.
He also stated that he is trying very hard to make sure that players attend training on time and he has started to achieve that already with the players now reporting on time. This is a sign that they are ready for the competition he said.
He appealed to those who have not been selected to have patience as not everybody will be selected at the same time urging them to still continue to train for the other up coming competitions.
Emmanuel stated that he started cricket with St Edwards Secondary school as Captain and during that period they won the school league cricket competition in 1999.
In 2001 he said he was called up by the national team for training after which he played a series of trials before he was selected to be part of the team.
Emmanuel stated that he was finally able to have a first team place in the national team in 2004 when the team went to South Africa and during their match with the Gambia he won the player of the match award.
The following year when Sierra Leone hosted the quadrangular tournament, he won the best player of the tournament award.
He appealed to individuals, government and private companies to come on board to support the team as cricket is one of the sports which has brought laurels to this nation.
ADVERTISEMENT