The A Side Keeps Winning: Nigeria A Post 139, Then Squeeze the Senior Team Out of the Chase

There is a particular awkwardness to a fixture between a country and its own second string, and Nigeria found every inch of it on Tuesday evening. Their A side, which had already beaten Sierra Leone by 33 runs on Monday, made the highest total this series has produced and then defended it with the discipline of a team that does not know it is supposed to be the understudy.

Nigeria A 139 for 8. Nigeria 120 for 7. Nineteen runs, on a ground where nineteen runs is a long way, and a senior side now looking at a series in which their own development squad is the team to beat.

Nobody in the Nigeria A innings passed 25, and that is the interesting part. They lost a wicket in the first over, were 18 for 2 in the fourth, and got to 139 by way of five contributions between 15 and 25 and one final flourish. Miracle Solomon's 15 from 26 was the anchor nobody will remember. Olayinka Olaleye's 23 from 30 was similarly unglamorous and similarly necessary — his 34-run stand with Solomon occupied 43 balls and took the innings out of trouble.

The acceleration came in two bursts. Sylvester Okpe hit 17 from 8 in a 27-run stand off 13 balls with Olaleye, and Bright Nyong made 25 from 22 in the middle before being bowled. Then, at 126 for 8 with four balls of the nineteenth over and all of the twentieth to come, Mohameed Taiwo hit 18 not out from 6 balls — a four and two sixes — and the total went from adequate to awkward.

Nigeria's bowling was not poor. Warees Azeez took 2 for 23 in four, Miracle Akhigbe 1 for 13 in three, Chima Akachukwu 1 for 19 in four. But Peter Aho's four overs cost 41, and Nigeria A's innings contained 18 extras — the kind of leakage that turns a 120 pitch into a 139 scoreboard.

Nigeria lost Ali Rahmon in the third over and then found their best partnership of the series: 71 from 63 balls between Selim Salau and Sulaimon Runsewe. At 82 for 1 in the thirteenth over, needing 58 from 44, the senior side were ahead of the game on any reading of this venue.

They then lost 6 for 38. Runsewe was caught for 28. Miracle Akhigbe was run out for 2. Salau — who had batted beautifully for 46 from 44 and was the one player capable of closing this out — was stumped in the sixteenth. Vincent Adewoye consumed 19 balls for 10. When your fifth-wicket pair takes 20 from 18 with the required rate climbing past nine, the chase has already gone.

Okpe (4-0-26-2) and Elochukwu Ndubudem (4-0-19-2) did the damage, and Gafar Kareem's wicketless four overs for 19 were arguably as valuable as either — squeezing an end shut in the phase when Nigeria most needed boundaries. From 89 for 4 at the start of the sixteenth, Nigeria added 31 and lost three more wickets.

Tafawa Balewa Square had already produced totals of 113 for 8, 80, 91 for 9, 95 for 2, 85 for 8 and 86 for 4 in this series before this match. Nigeria A's 139 is comfortably the highest score anyone has managed here, and it is worth asking why — the answer appears to be the 18 extras and Taiwo's six-ball 18, rather than any change in the surface.

The evening slot matters. This was the second game of a double-header, played later in the day than Ghana against Sierra Leone, and both sides found boundaries slightly easier to come by than the afternoon game had. Slightly. Nigeria's 120 contained four fours and one six across twenty overs.

Okpe's Player-of-the-Match award rests on eight balls and four overs. The eight balls came at the moment Nigeria A's innings needed someone to take a risk — 17 runs including two fours and a six, in a partnership that lasted thirteen deliveries and lifted the run rate out of the doldrums. The four overs came at the moment Nigeria's chase needed someone to stop it, and cost 26 for two wickets.

It is a modest set of numbers for a match award. It is also, on this ground in this series, exactly the right one — because the thing that has separated winners from losers at Tafawa Balewa Square all week is whether someone was willing to attack in a four-over window without giving the innings away.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview — it was not in our fixture list for the day, and we've since corrected our schedule to include both legs of the series' double-headers. We won't claim a call we didn't make.

What our coverage of Monday's Nigeria–Ghana match did note was that Nigeria A had beaten Sierra Leone earlier the same day, and that the A side looked the more balanced of the two Nigerian outfits. Two days later, they have beaten the senior team. We'll factor that into the previews for the rest of the series rather than treating the senior side as automatic favourites at home.

Nigeria A are two from two in this series, having defended 113 for 8 against Sierra Leone on Monday — bowling them out for 80 — and now beaten the senior side by 19. Mohameed Taiwo has established himself as a finisher worth building an innings around, and Sylvester Okpe's ability to contribute with bat and ball in short, decisive bursts makes him the most useful cricketer on either Nigerian team sheet.

The senior side's problems are narrower than the result suggests. Selim Salau's 46 and Sulaimon Runsewe's 28 are a functional opening platform. The issue is the five batters after them, who between them made 41 from 58 balls. Nigeria beat Ghana by eight wickets on Monday and lost to their own A side on Tuesday, which tells you their ceiling and their floor in the space of two days.

Nigeria face Sierra Leone next, on September 23 at the same venue — a chance to put the derby behind them. Nigeria A play Ghana in the day's other game.