Nigeria just won a global cricket award nobody outside the sport was watching for.

The Nigeria Cricket Federation's Criiio Cricket Festival, held in Zamfara, won the ICC x Rexona Festival of the Year award. It recognises grassroots cricket development built specifically around getting young girls in the state onto a pitch.

Cricket is not a sport most Nigerians follow closely, and Zamfara is not a state most headlines associate with sporting wins. That combination is exactly why the award matters more than its size suggests. NCF President Uyi Akpata called it a proud moment for everyone who has contributed to grassroots development. He dedicated the recognition to every young girl whose life the programme touched.

Programmes like this rarely make the news until there is a trophy attached. Coaches showing up in communities where organised sport for girls was not previously a given. Volunteers building something out of nothing, one season at a time, with no guarantee anyone beyond the pitch would ever hear about it.

Zamfara carries a reputation in national headlines that rarely has anything to do with sport. Most of what reaches the rest of the country from the state involves security, not children learning to bowl and field on a Saturday morning. An international federation recognising a cricket programme there, specifically for what it built with girls, is a story that should travel further than it will.

An award is a receipt for work already done, not the beginning of it. Somewhere in Zamfara this week, a girl who has shown up to that pitch for two years now has proof that it mattered to more than just her coach.