T20 World Cup 2021: Will Namibia's Super 12 win over Scotland prove their zenith or a mere false peak?
T20 World Cup 2021: Will Namibia's Super 12 win over Scotland prove their zenith or a mere false peak?
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For some 15 overs, they made Scotland's 109-run molehill look like a mountain.
Ruben Trumplemann had produced the finest first over of the tournament to date to wreck the Scottish top-order. The swing resulted in dangerous George Munsey chopping on the first ball. Two deliveries later, the left-armer found Calum MacLeod’s outside edge with a ball that swung in and nipped away, and then he pinned stand-in skipper Richie Berrington in front of the wickets with an inswinger to reduce Scotland to 2-3. A counter-attacking 44 off 27 from Michael Leask got the Scots to a score of some sort, but discipline through the middle and skills at the death meant the game was Namibia’s for the taking.
They took their time in taking it.
Craig Williams and Michael van Lingen struggled to get going at the top, repeatedly finding fielders in the powerplay as Namibia stuttered to 29-1. The rest of the top four were almost as circumspect, inching up the score and looking to play themselves in, confident they had the hitting down the order and the batting depth to allow the asking rate to climb. Again their confidence proved well-placed, as it had against the Dutch, as it had against Ireland, Namibia’s so-called “bomb squad” proved equal to the task, albeit in this case a less-than-daunting one. The trio of skipper Gerhart Erasmus, David Wiese and JJ Smit – the latter in this case delivering the game-sealing innings with an accelerating 32* – have allowed Namibia to bide their time chasing in the tournament thus far, an approach that has become almost a pattern that stands in contrast to their more aggressive track record with the bat.
Yet if Namibia can be accused of cutting things unnecessarily fine in their last three victories, the results can also be seen as a team getting it done even without firing on all cylinders, a team that is securing victories before even really hitting its stride. Despite their reputation for belligerent big-hitting, it was Namibia’s under-hyped bowling that set up their first win in the main draw of the Super 12s, another first to add to their first appearance at the T20 World Cup, their first win at a top-tier ICC tournament and their first win in a full international over an ICC full member – all achieved in the past couple of weeks.
That succession of pseudo-summits, and plenty more back down the trail if you care to look, were all scaled, like Wednesday's, one win at a time. Namibia have had a longer road than anyone to reach the Super 12s. They are the only side at this World Cup to have started from metaphorical sea-level, their qualification campaign stretching back to the the Africa Southern Sub-Regional Qualifiers, starting with their opening match against Eswatini at Gaborone, three years ago almost to the day. From that tournament through the rainswept Africa Regional Finals at Kampala, on to the Global Qualifier at Dubai – as far as Namibia had managed on past attempts – one tournament, one match, one win at a time, this Namibia side scaled false peak after false peak only to find another, taller summit awaiting them. Dedicated climbers will tell you that cresting a false peak can be one of the most enervating and demoralising experiences in the sport, having expended so much physical and mental energy on the one task at hand only to see a still more daunting challenge ahead.
Four such peaks now loom. Come Sunday the first of those will be Afghanistan, who Namibia have never beaten in T20s. In their most recent meeting in 2017 Namibia lost by 64 runs as Rashid Khan took three wickets for four runs and Namibia were bowled out for 103. From then on it’s uncharted territory with Pakistan, India and New Zealand to come, teams of a calibre that Namibia has not faced in any format since this current team were children.
If this is as far as this side go, and with four full members awaiting them another single win would itself be an upset much less a run deeper into then tournament, it would already be further than any other Namibian team has gone, and a quite remarkable achievement. For a country ranked 19th in the world, with less than a thousand cricketers playing regular senior men’s cricket on just a handful of grounds scattered across the sparsely populated country, going home with a win in the main draw of what is effectively a twelve-team World Cup would already be extraordinary.
But they have four more games to play, and they don’t look the least bit daunted.
Bertus de Jong is a freelance writer and journalist based in the Netherlands, covering primarily Associates cricket and sports governance.
He tweets: @BdJcricket
