Africa-Press – Namibia. Cricket Namibia president Rudi van Vuuren says Namibia’s performances at the T20 World Cup were disappointing and hard work lies ahead to improve the country’s competitiveness.
It was the fourth consecutive time that Namibia has competed at the T20 World Cup, but while they had previously recorded some victories against the likes of Sri Lanka, The Netherlands, Ireland, Scotland and Oman, they returned home empty-handed this time after losing all four their group matches against The Netherlands, India, the United States (US) and Pakistan.
“Against The Netherlands, we were in it for half of the game, but we lacked a bit of urgency in the batting department. Against India we were also on par and right up with the run rate till about halfway through our innings, but then we had a middle order collapse,” he says.
“Against the US, we gave away too many runs, and although our run chase started well, the second part of the chase was not good enough, and then against Pakistan we were just outclassed, especially in the spin skills levels,” he says.
Van Vuuren says the senior players did not perform up to expectation.
“We need our experienced players to start performing in these pressure situations. The pressure is high, but pressure comes with world cups, and our senior players need to lead the way there.
“We also need to focus on our pipeline here in Namibia, our junior players coming through. We’ve got a lot of good young players coming through, and we need to increase our player pool,” he says.
‘SPORTS ACT MUST CHANGE’
Van Vuuren, however, says Namibia has a big disadvantage against other Associate nations which apply a three-year residency rule to allow foreigners to represent them, and that Namibia needs to change the Namibia Sports Act to allow more talented players to represent the country.
“We need to look at changing our Sports Act to allow people who’ve been living in the country for a long time to play for Namibia. Our act says you must be a Namibian citizen to play, but to be a Namibian citizen, you need to have a passport, which you can only get once you’ve been in the country for 10 years or longer.
“But countries like Italy, the US, Canada and The Netherlands adopt the regulations of the international sport body, in this case the International Cricket Council, which stipulates that a player is eligible if he or she has lived in the country for three years.
“A team like Italy consists of South Africans and Australians and some Italians, while the US and Canada have several players from India, Pakistan and the West Indies in their teams, so those teams have an advantage over us,” he says.
Van Vuuren says Cricket Namibia has already held discussions with the government and plans are underway to update the legislation.
“We have held discussions with the government and they are reconsidering it. The process is underway to update and modernise laws, but it takes time,” he says.
Van Vuuren says a lot of hard work lies ahead.
“We definitely need to increase our player pool, we need to get more young players of quality coming through, and we need to play harder cricket at younger ages, so we have lot of hard work to do on and off the field going forward.
YOUNG TALENT
Van Vuuren, however, says some very talented young players are coming through the system.
“If you look at the recent series of our Namibia Academy team that played against Warwickshire Academy, there were some very good performances, with 100s, 50s and five-wicket hauls, so there are some very good young players coming through.”
The national team at the T20 World Cup only had three black players – Ben Shikongo, Zane Green and Max Heingo, but Van Vuuren says more will start coming through the development pipeline.
“If you look at our Academy team, a lot of young black players are coming through our development programme now, and I’m very confident that in the next couple of years, we will have more Max Heingos coming through. He is only 17, but he has worked incredibly hard to get where he is.
“There are other exciting talents, and Justus Hangula and Jona Ambuga, who are running our development programme at the coast, are producing some incredibly talented athletic young black players,” he says.
Cricket Namibia’s Ashburton Kwata Development Programme has been very successful in recent years, reaching more than 160 000 primary schoolchildren, while more than 50 000 now play structured cricket.
They have won the ICC Development Initiative of the Year award three times over the past five years, and Van Vuuren says it’s starting to deliver results.
“Definitely. That’s why you see these players coming through at the Academy level, at u19 level and at u15 level. Last year, we also had a young San child playing for the national u13 team, so these are the children, and that’s the future of cricket in Namibia.”
Van Vuuren says he is confident that Gary Kirsten will remain with the national team as a coaching consultant.
“Gary was an absolute asset to our team with his knowledge of Indian playing conditions, his knowledge of players that he has coached over the years, and just his general influence on the team.
“He is a very calm and collected coach, and is probably one of the top three coaches in the world at the moment.
“He’s an incredible asset to Namibia and I think Gary likes Namibia… Hopefully we can keep him in our system,” he says.
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