Uganda’s national basketball team, Silverbacks, suffered defeat in their first outing at the 2021 FIBA Afrobasket championship in Kigali, Rwanda on August 25 after they were beaten 93-55 by Senegal. PHOTO/COURTESY
The last time Ugandan basketball and Covid-19 were mentioned in the same sentence, the Silverbacks were being sent out of the February window of qualifiers bubble in Monastir, Tunisia due to reported cases in their camp.
At the ongoing, Fiba Afrobasket Finals in Kigali, though, Uganda is set to benefit from Covid-19 after the game between Cameroon and South Sudan meant for Wednesday morning at the Kigali Arena was called off because the former registered cases in their camp.
In a communication seen by this newspaper, the Fiba President of the Technical Committee Alphonse Bile, it is made clear that Cameroon loses the game by forfeiture.
“Based on the Fiba Central Board decision made in March 2021 for the Fiba official competitions in regards of the Covid-19 situations, the game D2 between Cameroon and South Sudan scheduled for 25th August 2021 at 3pm at Kigali Arena will not be played,” read part of the communication sent out to all teams in Group D.
This means that South Sudan won their first ever game at Afrobasket without breaking a sweat while Cameroon record nothing from the game.
It also means that Cameroon will find it close to impossible to make it to the next round of the tournament.
With two games left for the West Africans, they would require maximum points off both Senegal and Uganda but go into those games with a -20 points difference and no point from the forfeited game. In basketball, even a loss fetches a team one point and Cameroon have missed out on that making them the most likely team to finish bottom of the log.
Uganda will have members of their contingent, who are not fully vaccinated, take their own Covid-19 test today ahead of tomorrow’s game.
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