The T20 World Cup 2024 will begin this weekend in the USA and West Indies. It is the third time this big event is happening in the 2020s. UAE and Oman hosted the tournament in 2021, and Australia hosted it in 2022.
This year, West Indies and the USA will host the T20 World Cup for the first time. The ICC wants to make cricket more popular worldwide, so they have allowed more countries to join the T20 World Cup 2024.
One of the new teams this year is Uganda. They surprised everyone by beating Zimbabwe in the qualifying rounds to secure their place in the USA and West Indies.
Uganda is in Group C with West Indies, New Zealand, Afghanistan, and Papua New Guinea. Most fans don’t expect Uganda to finish in the top 2 of this group, but if their top five players perform well, they could surprise the higher-ranked teams in the T20 World Cup 2024.
1. Bilal Hassan
Pakistan has produced many great fast bowlers in cricket history. Most of them played for Pakistan’s national team, but Bilal Hassan, who was born in Punjab, plays for Uganda.
Nicknamed Billy Blanks, Bilal has taken 65 wickets in 43 T20I matches for Uganda. He is a right-arm fast bowler and usually starts the bowling for his team. Impressively, Bilal is second on the list for most T20I wickets by clean-bowling batters, having done it 44 times. Only Rashid Khan, with 45 bowled wickets, has more.
Cosmas Kyewuta, born on December 28, 2001, is one of the youngest players in this year’s T20 World Cup. He is a right-arm fast bowler, inspired by his cricket hero, Dale Steyn.
Cosmas has taken 27 wickets in 23 T20 International matches. His best performance is taking 4 wickets for just 5 runs, showing that he can be very hard for batters to score against when he is in good form.
3. Juma Miyaji
Another fast bowler on the list is Juma Miyaji. He looks up to Jofra Archer, who will play for England in the T20 World Cup 2024. Miyaji is nicknamed Junior Gaga within the Uganda team, and some also call him Nago Express because of his speed.
Juma Miyaji was born in 2003 and has taken 34 wickets in 20 T20 International matches for Uganda. His best bowling figures are 3 for 7 runs, and he maintains an economy rate of less than six runs per over as a right-arm pace bowler.
Roger Mukasa, who wears the number 37 jersey for Uganda, is a top-order batsman and wicketkeeper. He has always admired the Australian cricket star Adam Gilchrist. Roger has a lot of experience playing cricket.
In his T20 career, he has scored 1,675 runs in 87 innings. On average, he scores about 20 runs per innings and has a strike rate of nearly 115. Uganda hopes the 34-year-old will use his experience to help them in the upcoming matches.
5. Simon Ssesazi
Simon Ssesazi is a wicketkeeper-batter in Uganda’s T20 World Cup 2024 team. He bats left-handed, like his hero Chris Gayle. His jersey number is 24, and he dreams of going to Toronto, Canada.
Ssesazi is 27 years old and has scored more than 2,000 runs in 76 T20I innings. He has one century and averages over 30 runs per innings. He will be very important for Uganda’s chances of success in the T20 World Cup 2024.