Botswana cricket senior women national team, The Herons, will be hoping for an improved showing as they head to Rwanda for this year’s Kwibuka Women’s T20 tournament.
The Heron’s thirteen players member team, led by national team coach Stanley Timoni and managed by Cecilia Sebako, left the country this past Monday for the tournament. The games will be played from May 30th to June 8th, 2024 at the Gahanga Oval in Kigali.
At least 8 African nations are expected to compete at this year’s event, as compared to five (5) which were at last year’s tournament. Aside from Botswana and the host nation Rwanda, other countries returning from last year’s edition are Kenya, Nigeria and Uganda. The five are joined this year by tournament debutants Cameroon, Malawi and Zimbabwe.
Since making her debut in the tournament in 2021, Botswana’s achievements have been negligible. In its debut year, Botswana finished last without winning a single game in what was a five nations’ tournament.
In the eight nations tournament that followed in 2022, Botswana finished last again. This time however, Botswana had registered a win against Germany. However, they lost to the same Germany in the seventh-place playoffs and thus had to settle for last position.
Things did not get any better for The Herons in last year’s five nations edition of the tournament as they once again finished last. Here again, Botswana won only one match, which was against Nigeria. They also played a tie with Kenya but lost to the latter in the super over playoff.
As has been previously, this year’s tournament will be played in a round robin format, with all teams having an opportunity to play each other once. Botswana’s first game of the tournament will be against last year’s runners up Uganda.
They will then take on debutants Cameroon in their second match on the 31st of May before locking horns with hosts and tournament’s defending champions Rwanda on the 01st of June. These will be followed by matches against Nigeria, Zimbabwe, Malawi and Kenya on the 03rd, 04th, 05th and the 07th of June respectively.
The tournament is played annually in Rwanda since 2014 in remembrance of the victims of the 1994 Rwandan genocide. This year’s tournament will however be more important for the Botswana Cricket team as the tournament ‘will be an ICC sanctioned event,’ and matches played ‘will be considered towards the ICC Women’s T20i Rankings.’
