South Africa must fall, national baseball captain Adei
Set. Uganda players celebrate after winning a warm up game. PHOTO GEORGE KATONGOLE
Kampala. Bernard Adei, the captain of the Uganda baseball team is confident Uganda will excel at the African Baseball Olympic Pre-Qualifiers in South Africa starting tomorrow.
Adei is among the seniors on the 20-man team that left for South Africa today. Adei, who fine-tuned his skills in Japan, the world’s leading baseball playing country behind the US. The 27-year-old right hand pitcher says the team has a good mix of youth and experience with a dose of confidence.
“It has been a bit of an adjustment for the team since coach Tanaka (Katsuhisa) started training us last year,” he said. Katuhisa is among the volunteer coaches dispatched by the Japanese Aid International Cooperation Agency (JICA).
It was through such a link that the Japanese government constructed a baseball pitch at Gayaza.
Burkina Faso, Nigeria (Zone West), Uganda and Kenya (Zone East) already qualified for the Africa Cup. They will be joined by South Africa and Zimbabwe, who qualified from the Africa Zone South.
But South Africa is Africa’s highly rated country and with one slot available in Johannesburg, Adei says playing as underdogs is an advantage.
The winner of the six-team tournament in Johannesburg will advance to the Europe-Africa Qualifier for the Games of the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, to be played in Parma and Bologna, Italy, from 18 to 22 September.
