Historic: First ever Baseball5 African Championship to open on Monday 23 May
Egypt @ Tanzania will open round robin play at 9.30 am. The top two teams will qualify to the WBSC Baseball5 World Cup later this year. Eleven officers of eight participating National Teams attended a two-day WBSC Workshop before the start of the tournament.
The Baseball5 African Championship, a qualifier to the inaugural WBSC Baseball5 World Cup, opens on Monday, 23 May, at the National Stadium in Dar Es Salaam, Tanzania.
The 10 participating National Teams are split into two groups.
Group A: Zimbabwe, South Africa, Tunisia, Ghana, Kenya Group B: Egypt, Tanzania, Burkina Faso, Zambia and Uganda
Each participant has an eight-player roster, made up of four male and four female athletes.
Round-robin play will qualify four teams from each group into the elimination phase: quarterfinals, semifinals, and the African Championship/Final game.
Each matchup will consist of a best-of-three series.
Egypt and Tanzania will inaugurate the programme at 9 am local time. Seven more games are scheduled from 10:30 am to 7:30 pm.
The winners of the semifinals, scheduled at 9 am and 10:30 am on Thursday, 26 May, will play for the first-ever African Baseball5 title and advance to the WBSC Baseball5 World Cup, which is due to be held later this year.
Two National Teams out of 12 have already qualified for the World Cup: France and Lithuania, the top two finishers of the European Championship 2020.
Teams from the Americas (3) and Oceania (1) are still to be determined.
Eleven representatives from eight out of 10 participants (all the National Teams in Group A; Tanzania, Zambia and Uganda out of Group B) participated in a workshop led by tournament director Chedli Mokrani (Tunisia) on Friday, 20 and Saturday, 21 May.
Both days consisted of two sessions of three hours each. During the morning sessions, the participants went through the Baseball5 rulebook. In the afternoon, they took the field, experiencing Baseball5 as players and officials.
The Workshop ended with a friendly Baseball5 game between the participants and the Tanzania National Team.
