Sport: PNG U19 cricketers attempt to avoid wooden spoon

1:08 pm on 27 January 2018

Papua New Guinea remain upbeat as they attempt to avoid the wooden spoon at the Under 19 Cricket World Cup.

The Garamuts have lost five straight games in New Zealand, the latest a three wicket defeat by Ireland on Thursday.

Cricket PNG CEO Greg Campbell said they started strongly with the bat but were unable to follow through.

"Again the middle order failed and we got ourselves into trouble losing three or four quick wickets and, as you saw, we lost 7 for 20 so they have to rectify that tomorrow (Sunday) against Kenya and try to finish in 15th spot but the fielding and bowling were very good," he said.

"We probably could have got away with a win, they were seven down when they passed it off 40 overs..yeah the batting has to improve and they've got one more chance to do it."

Simon Atai top scored for the Garamuts.

PNG wicket-keeper batsman Simon Atai. Photo: Supplied

Kenya are also winless so far in the tournament and Campbell said both teams have faced similar challenges.

"They've posted some good scores and had some bad scores so they're probably in the same boat as us, they probably were in a hard pool."

"I mean we're not making any excuses: we've played a couple of associates but the rest of the games were against full members so it will be a good game. We want to finish off with a win and so will they so it should make a very interesting clash," Campbell said.