By Fredrica Lassayo

Freetown, 25th August, 2026 – The rebuilding of Sierra Leone’s Under-19 Cricket Team is well underway, with the coaching staff banking on youth exposure despite challenges with facilities and player fundamentals.

The Director of Coaching and High Performance for the Sierra Leone Under-19 Cricket Team, Sylvester Mutusva, said a key part of the rebuild strategy was fielding very young players who debuted in the Under-19 Cricket Tournament, hosted in Rwanda, with ten of the fourteen players under-17, competing in an Under-19 tournament. He said the tournament was about development [of players], not just results.

“Having ten boys who are under-seventeen competing in an Under-19 tournament, the reason was to give them the exposure first of the competition,” Mutusva explained. The aim is for this group to “come out of the box as a player” by learning early what international competition demands.

Discussing the team’s performance, he said, “The performance was not up to standard because the facilities they have are a challenge.” He said, “I’m happy for them because out of a team of fourteen, ten of them are debutants to the tournament and it was their first time playing in such conditions.”

Despite the result, Mutusva believed, “The future is bright because one player scored a century.” He said that having one player score a century in such a tournament is excellent. He noted the future is bright. “I can only say time will tell if we keep on working with these guys,” he said.

Mutusva said the biggest challenge in rebuilding is the lack of basics among players coming through the ranks. “In rebuilding, you also need to work on high performance,” he said. “When we speak of high performance, we are talking about identifying fine players to upgrade their skills. But at the moment it’s difficult because most of the players coming to this stage of competing for the under-19 tournament lack the basics of the game.”

To address that, he said the Association is pushing for better development structures.

 

“We are trying to have proper structures to push the fundamentals of the game so that when they get to the competition stage, they will compete well with other teams,” he said.

Discussing the growth of the players, he said, “There is no player that can grow by themselves without coaches. So, the emphasis is on having good coach education…. who know exactly what is needed.”

With the ten debutants now exposed to international competition, the national setup hopes the investment will translate into stronger performances in the next qualifying.