Cricket Cranes start strong on Tour of South Africa

• DP Lions 109 all out
• Uganda 110/5
• Uganda won by 5 wickets

Cricket Cranes started their tour to South Africa on a winning note, defeating the local DP Lions team by five wickets.

The Ugandans are using the Tour to South Africa to get themselves ready for the T20 World Cup Qualifiers in Zimbabwe. Uganda is chasing a second consecutive World Cup appearance at the Qualifiers from September 26th to October 4th.

In the first warm-up game against the hosts, DP Lions, Uganda won the toss and elected to bowl first. Juma Miyagi and Cosmas Kyewuta were tidy enough up front, and the breakthrough came with Kyewuta getting rid of Reuben Du Toit with 22 runs on board.

A strong passage of play from the visitors slowed down the hosts, with the slow bowling options putting the brakes on the flow of runs.

On his return to the team after missing the Pearl of Africa series, Henry Ssenyondo returned figures of 2/22 in his quota of four overs, with Miyagi cleaning up the tail to claim 3/23 in his quota as Uganda bowled out the hosts for only 109 in 19 overs.

It was very disciplined bowling performance from the vistors who didn’t give away many boundary balls, but they will have to work on some of the fielding after a couple of balls went through the fielders.

In the run chase, Gaurav Tomar (35) took the game to the hosts with some clean hitting, finding the ropes twice and three balls going the distance in his enterprising knock. His departure slowed down the run scoring for Uganda, but they were never in trouble with Dinesh Nakrani (29) and Riazat Ali Shah (10) finishing the job at the backend to bring up a five-wicket win.

A great start for Uganda as they build up to the qualifiers in Zimbabwe, they have two more warm-up games against Titans and DP Lions before heading to Zimbabwe.