The Eagles of Namibia are set for their second match at the ICC Men’s T20 Cricket World Cup against Scotland at the Kensington Oval in Barbados at 21h00 today.
The Namibians are coming from Monday’s confidence-boosting win against Oman, where David Wiese was the hero for his side with a stunning all-round display.
Wiese hit 13 runs off four balls in the first super over before defending the 22-run target sensationally by tightening the screws with the ball to restrict Oman to just 10 runs in reply.
Namibia needed seven runs from the last nine balls to win the match in regulation time, but Oman’s Mehrah Khan’s stunning bowling performance saw the game extended into a super over.
Captain Gerhard Erasmus stepped up to the challenge in partnership with Wiese, putting the final two balls away for boundaries to take his team to a total of 1/21 from the super over to set up the victory.
The team’s head coach Pierre de Bruyn in a post-match interview said they are ecstatic about the result. “It was a close game; we took it deep, and winning the game in the super over was a great learning curve for the side. The way we bowled, fielded and executed our plan was perfect. We did a lot of homework on their batters, but we lost our intensity in the middle and made things hard for ourselves. But we have learned some good lessons,” he said.
Today’s match will be another tough encounter for Namibia, as Scotland looks in fine form and have made a habit of punching above their weight at ICC global events in recent years.
In 2021, they started their T20 World Cup campaign with a win over Bangladesh, while in the same competition a year later, they downed two-time champions West Indies in Hobart.
At last summer’s 50-over World Cup qualifier in Zimbabwe, Scotland beat the hosts, West Indies and Ireland as they came agonisingly close to reaching the tournament finale, only to fall to the Netherlands at the final hurdle.
The Scots played their first match against defending champions England, and put up a great performance before the match was abandoned due to wet weather.
George Munsey and Michael Jones batted superbly to take non-Test nation Scotland to 90-0 at the Kensington Oval.
Rain spared defending champions England a potentially tough chase. However, both England and Scotland received a point each.
Wiese spoke about how the weather also affected their war-mup matches. “We had two warm-up games affected by the weather. We had to go on and off the field, but as a professional sportsman, you must be able switch on when you get on the field and switch off when you are off the field. You can’t stay focused 24/7,” he said as Namibia readies for Scotland.
-lmupetami@nepc.com.na