By Aderonke Ojo
The 2025 edition of Edo State female Cricket league kicked off on Saturday in style at the two designated venues hosting the league matches in Benin City with Adolor Amazons and Emotan Queens recording victories
At the centre of excellence for women Cricket,Iyoba Girls College, Benin City, Adolor Amazons Cricket Club dispatched Ekpoma Supernova Cricket Club by 3 wickets.
The Amazons won the toss, electing to field first. They fielded well enough to restrict their opponents to 34 runs for all wickets out after 9.2 overs.
In the second innings,the Amazons waited patiently as they batted with caution to meet their target of 35 runs after 12.2 overs with 7 wickets falling.
Despite the absence of Team Captain, Abigail Igbobie due to injury for the Adolor Amazon CC, it was a rude shock to many that notable names like Peculiar Agboya, Christabel Chukwuwonye, Beauty Oguai, etc couldn’t live up to the expectations of many followers.
Coach Emmanuel Eromosele of Ekpoma Supernova CC picked the positives in the results, hoping that his team will learn from the defeat.
”We lost, it i a hard one on us, but for me, I’ll like to look at loses as lessons. Wins are nice, but losses are lessons for improvement.
” Moving forward in the tournament we hope to do better and bounce back from this loss. We’ll look at our lapses in today’s game. we are going to be improving on them, especially from the batting end and then look at new players who are also key players in the team can also contribute to team work and see how we can come back from this defeat.” He said.
The story was different in the camp of the Amazons’ team as an obviously elated Coach Marvellous Oyivwi reacted at the end of the game, saying,”The victory for today is one that is very important and good for the team.
“ We have to build on this victory, look for any loose ends, tighten the nuts going into the other games of the tournament as we hope for the very best.”
”The game went according to our initial plan as we hoped to field first due to the nature of the field and the ground, God willing we won the toss and went for field, did our job with the bowling to stop our opponents under 40 runs which is a very low total for T20 so it was easy for us to sail through and get victory.”
At the High Performance Centre, Edo Boys High School, Ugbowo, Benin City, friends became foes, teammates became contenders as battle for points motivated individual and teams’ performance, with bowling and fielding wwere mainly tested as Emotan Queens CC emerged victorious over Idia Royals toCC.
Idia Royals CC won the toss and opted for fielding as they bowled their opponents all out after 11.3 runs with 37 runs on the scoreboard.
Emotan Queens on the other hand had a task which was to ultimately trap down their opponents chances of securing runs in the second innings. They fortunately got the job done after 9.2 overs with their opponents only managing 24 runs which confirmed. the Emotan Queens 13 runs victory over the Idia Royals.
Hostilities will continue on Sunday by 10:00 AM when Ekpoma Supernova CC takes on Idia Royals CC at the Centre of Excellence for women Cricket, Iyoba Girls College, Benin City, while Adolor Amazons CC will aim to continue their good form against Emotan Queens Cricket club.