Namibia will face Botswana in their first match of the ICC Africa Under 19 Cricket World Cup Qualifiers that will be held in Windhoek from Sunday 29 August to 5 September.
Eight countries will participate in the qualifiers with the top two nations qualifying to play in the ICC Under 19 Cricket World Cup Qualifier in 2011.
The coach of the Namibian team, Johan Rudolph, said that the team was ready for the tournament.
“We have been preparing since May, the boys are ready. We are at a point where we just want to play,” Rudolph said.
“We worked a lot on the batting and that has improved a lot recently.”
“I’m sure the boys will do well, and we also have a couple of experienced players who played in the previous qualifiers last year,” he continued.
Rudolph was cautious about the first match against Botswana, who Namibia lost to in last year’s qualifiers. The match will be played at the United cricket fields on Sunday, starting at 09h00.
“We don’t want to underestimate teams, we will just approach the match as we would any other match. We are going to take it match by match,” Rudolph said.
“This is a new team, and we have home advantage. We just need to apply what we have learned and see how it goes,” he added.
The captain of the team, Wian van Vuuren was very excited about playing in the tournament.
“Everyone is excited about playing. We have a lot of young guys who are new to the squad who are very happy to be playing at home,” Van Vuuren said.
“Our fielding has been our main concern, that has always been our weakest link but we worked on it and the boys and I are more confident now.”
“We have played against Botswana before and they beat us, but we will we put that behind us and will just focus on winning the match,” he concluded.
Namibia is ranked third behind Uganda and Sierra Leone in the tournament. The other countries taking part are Zambia, Kenya, Botswana, Tanzania and Nigeria.
Two of Namibia’s players, namely Van Vuuren and Gerhard Lotter have represented the country at senior level before. The rest of the team consists of Justin Baard, Stephan Baard, Luke Bolton, Kobus Brand, Christopher Coombe, Andre Engelbrecht, Gerhard Erasmus, Shalako Groenewald, Zhivago Groenewald, Pelham Myburgh, Colin Schoombee, Bredell Wessels and Jasper Engelbrecht.
Over 50 matches will be played during the qualifiers on a round robin basis. The matches will be hosted at the Union, WAP, CCD, United and Wanderers cricket fields.