Outclassed Eagles prepare for US trip

Despite being outclassed by South Africa in their recent one-day international series, the FNB Namibia Eagles gained valuable experience ahead of their trip to the United States at the end of the month.

The Eagles gave a competitive performance against South Africa and Zimbabwe in their FNB T20 international series, even beating the Proteas in their opening match and then narrowly missing out on the final.

The gulf in class, however, showed in the longer ODI version of the game as SA dominated the 50-over series, winning all three their matches with ease.

They won the first ODI by 99 runs, the second by 157 runs and the third by nine wickets, while dominating all aspects of the game.

They twice scored close to 350, with Jordan Hermann being their top batter with 247 runs at an average of 82.33, while Namibia failed to reach 200.

Their top order was especially vulnerable, as exemplified in the second ODI when Namibia lost their first three wickets for only one run, and only captain Gerhard Erasmus made much of an impression with the bat, scoring 92 runs with a top score of 68.

Lower-order batter Ruben Trumpelmann was the next best, scoring 57 runs with a top score of 30, while he was also the top bowler of the series with six wickets.

The series served as preparation for Namibia’s final Cricket World Cup League 2 matches against the United States and United Arab Emirates in Dallas next month, and national coach Craig Williams says it was a good learning curve.

“It’s obviously disappointing not to get good results, and I think we didn’t play our best cricket which is the most disappointing, but it’s all about learning.

“We definitely learnt a lot from the quality South Africa brought. We’ve had tough discussions among our group, and I think it was good for us, because we started working straight away on Monday again – on our technique and where we can get better,” he says.

“The SA squad is still young, but they all play professional cricket. They’ve got franchise contracts and play international cricket, while we had some 18-year-old youngsters bowling at the likes of Dewald Brevis. There will always be a massive gap between test nations and Associate nations in ODIs, so our job is to try and narrow the gap, but that will always be the challenge,” Williams says.

He says he was impressed with Namibia’s bowling attack.

“I reckon we’ve probably got the strongest bowling attack in associate cricket at the moment. We’ve got four seamers, and our top spinner Bernard Scholtz hardly played, so to keep SA to about 300 was a really good effort.

“I’m feeling very positive about our Cricket World Cup League 2 campaign and the United States tour. We don’t really have injuries, JJ (Smit) had a bit of a back niggle, but he’s better again, and we are in a good space and we’re very positive about the trip,” he says.

Williams confirms that Ireland will tour Namibia next month.

“We will return from our American trip on 15 October and three days later Ireland will arrive for a tour to Namibia.

“A couple of European teams have approached us to come and play here because we will host the Global Cricket World Cup Qualifier in February next year, and they want to come and prepare and see what the conditions are like,” he says.

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