Namibia look to down Scotland in their opening match of Super 12s

Namibia vs Scotland, 21st Match, Group 2 (N), Abu Dhabi, Oct 27 2021

Scotland’s unbeaten record at this year’s World Cup came to a sad end against Afghanistan on Monday. Several unwanted records were bagged on the way as they lost nine wickets to Mujeeb Ur Rahman and Rashid Khan, a signal that Scottish players are weak against spin.

Their first chance at leaving that performance firmly in the past will come on Wednesday against Namibia, the only other Associate team surviving in the World Cup. With three teams from the subcontinent in their group, and New Zealand to boot, both Scotland and Namibia will have marked this match as the place to pick up two sure points.

For Namibia, it is the first match of this stage, and an opportunity to get started with a win before any thoughts of upsetting the bigger teams later on. For Scotland, it’s a little more necessary than that. They were the most dominant side in the first round and starting with losses to the two teams they would consider closest to them in stature might demotivate them in what has already been a historic campaign.

The teams have already played each other twice this month before the World Cup began, and Scotland lost both those games. They’ll be looking to put a stop to that.

Team News

Injury/Unavailabity concerns: No injuries or problem of unavailability have occurred for either sides.

Namibia Probable XI: 1 Zane Green (wk), 2 Craig Williams, 3 Gerhard Erasmus (capt), 4 David Wiese, 5 JJ Smit, 6 Jan Frylinck, 7 Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton, 8 Pikky Ya France/Stephen Baard, 9 Ruben Trumpelmann, 10 Michael van Lingen, 11 Bernard Scholtz

Scotland Probable XI: 1 Kyle Coetzer (capt), 2 George Munsey, 3 Calum MacLeod, 4 Richie Berrington, 5 Matthew Cross (wk), 6 Michael Leask, 7 Chris Greaves, 8 Mark Watt, 9 Josh Davey, 10 Safyaan Sharif, 11 Brad Wheal

What they said

Gerhard Erasmus no how the journey has been for the Namibia team

“Financially we weren’t where we wanted to be, but as a team we weren’t really performing. And to think of tournaments like qualifying tournaments, we tend to just fall away at the end. We knew we really had to turn around, and it’s really been an effort to do that.

It had to be some great role play within Cricket Namibia – from the coaching staff to the board members to the administration itself – that have followed to buy into one vision and go some way.

And now we sort of I guess at the peak and reaping those rewards which is great. And hopefully continue going upwards.”

Scotland’s Matthew Cross on their clash against Namibia

“Namibia are a very good team. I actually said before the Cup started that I expected them to go through. I’m kind of pleased that they did. They’ve got everything covered – they’ve got experience, they’ve got a really good fielding unit and very tidy bowling.

So we know enough about them, we’ve played against them three or four times in the last, maybe three years now. There’s no real surprises but at the same time we do expect to go out there and win.”

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