Tanzania national cricket team’s skipper Hamis Abdallah has strongly criticised the ever increasing lack of sponsorship for the game.

Abdallah, an all rounder who has won a semi-professional cricketing career in England since 2008, says most of the corporate sponsors are blindly rushing to support football.

He says cricketers have been highly overlooked despite heightened performance that saw the team excelling at international platform.

Abdallah says too much attention is given to football which is well funded and wins huge support despite poor performance.

Ranked 6th in the continent’s top cricket elites, Tanzania cricket team has called for stakeholders from all over the country to rally for support.

Speaking in an exclusive interview, Abdallah expressed his concern on the favouritism shown by stakeholders to back football no matter their stagnated international achievement for Tanzania.

“We have been left orphans when it comes to sponsorship but our determination and hard work has been rewarded in Africa and beyond,” he said.

“Women U-19 team won the Africa title last year while the senior team qualified for the Twenty20 World Cup tournament to be played this year. Despite the achievements, cricket is yet to get an official call from the Parliament for acknowledgement like the football teams that have become regular visitors there,” bemoaned Abdallah.

“I am sure our achievements are known but I wonder why we are left in the cold to fight on our own with no motivation to drive us to more success,” concluded Abdallah, one of the best home-grown all rounder.

The statement comes in awake of a dark cloud that surrounds Tanzanian football with both Taifa and Twiga Stars knocked out of Africa Cup of Nations qualifiers over the weekend.

While Taifa Stars lost to Mozambique, Twiga had earlier crashed out to Ethiopia.

Cricket team has strong passion to write Tanzania name in sports history books

The national U-19 women team is in Division Three at the moment with expectation to win promotion into division two.

Like what is happening to football where FIFA is pouring in annual subsidy to the tune of $250,000 on annual basis, the International Cricket Council also is injecting financial assistance to boost cricket promotion.