St. Johns Secondary School-Mukono has confirmed its readiness to challenge Gayaza High School in the girls’ cricket semifinals for the Central Region National Cricket Qualifiers.
The game is slated for Saturday this weekend at Gayaza High School. The School Cricket coach, Saad Baraka Turyamwesimiira commonly known as TB Saad says the team is more than ready to win.
The new school in the games (St Johns SS) has lived to give sleepless nights to the old folks.
St Johns SS joined cricket in 2022, the girls’ team has so far qualified for three consecutive national championships (Cricket Week) in 2022, 2023, and 2024.
The school won the inaugural Schools League 2023 in the Central region. Two of its players; Giringish Nabulime, the captain, and Irene Mutonyi were nominated for training at the under-19 national team.
Uganda Cricket Association has designated a big squad to select the best players to form the national team which will represent Uganda in the world qualifiers in Kigali-Rwanda in August.
For the little time in the cricket field, the St Johns girls’ team also participated in the ladies’ national division 2 league in 2022 where its player Irene Mutonyi emerged as the best bowler as well as MVP (Best Player).
The school has not only set the stage for girls but also for boys. The boy’s team qualified for the nationals last year (2023) finishing in the sixth position among the 16 teams which participated at Jinja.
Lately, the boys’ team was invited to play practice matches with the senior national women’s team (Victoria Pearls) in preparation for the World Cup Qualifiers in UAE.
The School Headtecher, Henry Ssentongo Ssali commits to make St Johns the centre of dependence for the national team when it comes cricket. “This is one of the sports activities we now strongly hold, we want the national cricket teams at all levels to have names of players who have gone through our school.”
For starters, Cricket is one of the superfine bat and ball sports played by two teams on an oval. It involves batting, fielding, and bowling with eleven players on each side.