When Madeleine Nseke Sissako began playing cricket aged nine in Yaounde, those who poked fun at her and her team-mates drew an unlikely comparison.<\/p>\n
“They mocked us and said we looked like Ninja Turtles,” the Cameroonian told BBC Sport Africa. “Because we were carrying sticks [and] they didn’t know what they were for.<\/p>\n
“Many of our neighbours didn’t believe in the sport.” <\/p>\n
Nseke Sissako has since established herself as one of the leading professional cricketers in the Central African nation.<\/p>\n
The sport is almost a way of life for her family, with eight of the Nsekes either past or present Cameroon internationals across senior and age-grade sides.<\/p>\n
Nseke Sissako, however, initially took some persuading about the merits of cricket from her older brother Abanda Protais.<\/p>\n
“We were always together while we grew up,” the 29-year-old said.<\/p>\n
“I accompanied him whenever he went out to play.<\/p>\n
“At the beginning I didn’t really like it, but he convinced me and guided me through the basics.”<\/p>\n
The Women’s T20 World Cup is currently taking place in England and Wales, and South Africa, runners-up at the last two editions, are the only African nation ever to appear at the tournament.<\/p>\n
Nseke Sissako, who has been motivated by those performances, has big ambitions for cricket in her homeland – and is also taking inspiration from one of the country’s best-known footballing trailblazers.<\/p>\n
“My motivation pushes me to make more effort.<\/p>\n
“Certainly, we are already kind of in the Roger Milla generation of our sport domestically.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When Madeleine Nseke Sissako began playing cricket aged nine in Yaounde, those who poked fun at her and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-660526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}