Niël Terblanché
AN elated Namibian men’s cricket team celebrated their historic achievement of securing a place in the T20 Cricket World Cup in Australia next year after the trashed Oman by 54 runs Dubai last night.
The victory means that they will play in the semi-final of the Dubai qualifier tournament. Also notable about the historic achievement is that Namibia is one of the very few countries in the world whose teams – mostly made up of amateurs – qualified for both the 2109 Rugby World cup and now the 2020 T20 Cricket World Cup – where they compete against professional teams from all over the world.
The achievement of the Namibian Cricketers follows a few days after the National Netball team walked away with the Championship at the M1 Nations Cup in Singapore and few short weeks after the Namibian rugby players had the rugby world on the edge of their seats when they took an early lead against the All Blacks in Japan.
In Dubai the Namibians won the toss and opted to bat first against Oman. The Namibian batsmen set a target of 161 runs target in the 20 overs allotted for their opponents to chase.
Jan Frylinck dismissed opening batsman, Jatinder Singh with his second delivery of the first over for a golden duck.
The dismissal of Singh did not rattle the Omani’s too much and they started to increase their run rate over the next few overs. Bernard Scholtz however started chopping at Oman’s top order batsmen by dismissing Aqib Ilyas in the sixth over. Nico Davin caught Zeeshan Maqsood from a delivery by Gerhard Erasmus in the eighth over. Zane Green stumped Khawar Ali from a delivery by Scholtz in the ninth.
Suraj Kumar walked after being caught by Frylink from a ball delivered by Erasmus in the twelfth over whil Frylink also caught Aamir Kaleem from the first delivery in the 13th over by Scholtz.
Erasmus bowled and caught Sandeep Goud in the 14th while a Craig Williams delivery saw JP Kotze catching a highball from Mohammad Nadeem and sending him back to the stands.
JJ Smit caught Khurram Nawaz with a LBW with the first delivery in the 18th over. Smit also delivered the death knell for the Omanis in the 19th over when Scholtz caught a high ball hit by Fayyaz Butt.
Namibia will face the men from Papua New Guinea in the semi-final on Friday while the other semi-final match will be between Ireland and the Netherlands.
