Baseball: Nigeria Prepares For Ghana Encounter …Tryout Holds in Abuja to select National Senior Baseball Team

A two-day Tryout to select members of the National Senior Baseball team will hold inside Abuja Baseball Park from 13-14 April, 2013.

Secretary General of Nigeria Baseball and Softball Federation, Kehinde Olaniyan, the 2-day Abuja tryout will be followed by a national camping in Port Harcourt.

 “This Tryout is in preparation for the Camping in Port Harcourt, followed by the International Friendly holding in Accra Ghana” “This has been scheduled to hold 26 to 28 April 2013. 25 players shall be called to this camp from the Tryout”

“Camping will start from 16 and ends on 25 April 2013 when the national team will depart for Accra, Ghana” “The team shall be supervised by the Technical Adviser, Coach Gerard Hall and assisted by 3 local coaches” he said

He said that the friendly match against Ghana in Accra was a long road preparation mapped out by Nigeria Baseball and Softball Federation for baseball Classic next year adding that this would go a long way in ensuring good showing for African countries.

He wondered why no African nation is participating in this year’s events stating that South Africa is the biggest baseball playing nation in Africa, but not in this year’s edition of Classic. “It’s surprising that no African nation is participating in this year’s Baseball Classic. This is a trend we won’t allow to continue if we want the game of baseball to develop in Africa”

“Sincerely, I believe that we are presently progressing in the right direction and what we need now is to sustain the tempo and hopefully we will hit our target” “The next classic will come up in 2015 but the qualifying round will hold in 2014.

Africa must prepare itself for it and West Africa in particular. And this is why we are using this international friendly to rally our professionals in Europe and America to begin to identify with Africa” he concluded.

Meanwhile some Nigeria players in the United States, Europe and South Africa have indicated interest in taking part in the International friendly between the two West African countries.

 Among the players are Tobi Adeyemi who plays in the Frontier League in United States and Walex Kolawole who plays for Carpi in Italy.