Lagos, Abuja cricket ovals suffer setback

The completion of cricket ovals in Lagos and Abuja suffered a major setback after the federation failed to find the required clay for the surface, The Punch reports.

President of the Nigeria Cricket Federation, Prof Yahaya Ukwenya, has revealed that work could not be completed on the given date owing to the difficulty in finding the right clay for the pitch surface.

“We are just at the finishing point and that is to lay the clay on top of the surface so that it will allow for planting of seeds,” Ukwenya told The Punch.

“We’ve examined clay soils from about 10 sites from South-West. We took some clay deposits to the laboratory for analysis and found out that none of them matches what is acceptable to allow games to be played well on the pitch.

“We have now sent someone to the Northern part of Nigeria where clay is generally in abundance and possibly the type of clay that we are looking for which is called the black cotton clay. The man came back with about 22 samples and they are currently undergoing evaluation.

“That’s what we are doing at the moment and we hope that this laboratory study will be completed by next week.”