Stanbic Cricket enters crucial stage

The sixth edition of the annual Howzat Junior Six-a-Side Secondary School Tournament tagged 'Stanbic Bank Cup' will be rounded off Sunday at the Tafawa Balewa Square Oval in Lagos.

A total of 22 schools are featuring in the competition which is one of the numerous development programmes of the Howzat Cricket Foundation. Defending Champions Methodist Boys High School will take to the pitch today in one of the final round of matches.

The two-day event which bowled off yesterday at the TBS saw a number schools advancing to the next stage of the competition,with most of the burgeoning cricketers putting up splendid performances that spoke volume of a bright future for cricket in the country.

In some of the matches played before filinf this report,Onitolo Secondary School,Oregun High School and Igbobi College,all picked important victories. Onitolo were the first to taste victory,as they dismissed the lads from Government College Lagos by 5 wickets. Onitolo batted first and played 35 runs in 5 overs for the loos of no wicket while Government College amassed 32 runs also in 5 overs but for the loss of 5 wickets.

The second game ended in fvour of Oregun High School who beat their Coker Secondary School counterparts by 12 runs.Igbobi College,however did not have to break a sweat to move ahead in the tournament having walked over Coker Secondary School's Team A which failed to show up for the match. Prominent among the outstanding players of the day were Augustine Alikali of Government College and Tobi Babalola of Oregun High School who scored individual high 15 and 13 runs respectively.

Though the low rate of runs was ocassioned by the limited overs-5- that each participating team is allowed to play. Representative of the sponsors Tina Otu disclosed that juicy prizes would be presented today to successful participanting teams and individual players who distinguished themselves in the competition. "Stanbic Bank is committed to promoting the game of cricket.It is part of our corporate responsibilities to the public in which we operate.The company has been doing this for years now and we don't intend to stop," explained Otu