The Tanzania Cricket Association (TCA) has announced their plans for the upcoming Advanced Players Cricket League (APL).
After departing his role in Uganda in January to join the TCA, this will be head coach Steve Tikolo’s first involvement with the annual event which is aimed at getting the best players from each of the leagues in Tanzania competing against each other.
The competition is scheduled to begin on the 8th August 2020 and conclude on the 16th of the same month, with all of the games taking place at the Gymkhana ground in Dar es Salaam.
The TCA Communication Officer, Atif Salim, has stated the format of the tournament will be T20 and will consist of six teams. Each team will consist of 14 players and will be made up of a mixture of senior and Under-19 players. Due to the mixture of players competing, the tournament promises to provide prime opportunities to the young talent in the country to learn from more senior players but also to compete at the highest level in the country.
Due to the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the tournament will be focused on ensuring that players who are currently within the country are able to play. Salim shared that the TCA has sent invitations to all the clubs within the country to nominate their players for selection in the tournament. After this initial step, the players who are nominated then will be passed to a coordinating committee who will then finalise the list of players who will be competing. The coordinating committee, as described by Salim, will be made up of ‘experienced personnel in the cricket fraternity which will also include the national team head coach, Steve Tikolo’. Once the players who are to compete in the tournament have been selected, Tikolo along with the other members of the committee will then allocate the 84 players into the six squads to ensure that the squads competing are equally balanced.
This edition of the APCL promises to be exciting with the committee balancing the standards of the teams. There will be a consistently competitive standard maintained throughout the competition and the tournament promises to gives young players a platform to showcase the talent within the country. But as always within any form of competitive cricket, there are sure to be a lot at stake, for more than just the youth in the country. With cricket beginning to restart in Africa it can be assured that all the players participating will want to be putting their name forward for national selection.
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