Watch cricket video highlights of ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 twelfth match between Scotland vs Namibia. Venue of the match will be Bridgetown.
In the T20 World Cup 2024, Scotland defeated Namibia by five wickets thanks to an incredible run chase. After being dismissed by England, they made their way back to the Kensington Oval and, at the fourth try, defeated Namibia in their first T20I match by reaching a target of 156 with nine balls remaining. In the end, Scotland won thanks to a 74-run combination between Richie Berrington and Michael Leask. Leask gave the chase momentum with a 35 off 17 balls, while Berrington completed 47 not out.
Earlier, with the ball, Namibia skipper Gerhard Erasmus had reversed the tide in his team’s favor, taking 2 for 29 after his 52 had supported their 155 for 9 in the opening innings. The unpredictability of the Kensington Oval surface did not immediately support Erasmus’ choice to win the toss and bat first, as Namibia found themselves at 55 for 4, mainly due to the skill of Brad Wheal and Brad Currie, who were excellent with the new ball.
But with his eleventh fifty-plus T20I performance, 37 of which came in a rebuilding partnership of 51 with Zane Green for the fifth wicket, Erasmus turned the Namibia innings around. In spite of losing George Munsey early in their pursuit, Scotland had amassed 49 runs by the halfway point of the ninth over with only one wicket lost. Michael Jones picked up the pace, making 15 of the 18 runs in the powerplay’s last over before Erasmus entered the game again and started a collapse.
Following 11 overs, Scotland slumped from 49 for 1 to 73 for 4, thanks to the combined efforts of Bernard Scholtz’s sluggish left arm and his cunning offspinners. At that moment, Leask and Berrington teamed up to push Scotland to the limit with a 42-ball combination that featured seven boundaries, four of which came from Leask. Even though he would eventually stumble, Berrington sent David Wiese flying into the pavilion to seal the victory and put Scotland atop the group.
What a great cameo, huh? Leask turned this pursuit inside out and upside down in just 17 balls. The boundary had dried up by the time he arrived, and Scotland needed 80 out of 50 deliveries. When he was finished, 9 out of 13 was the equation. He was never below a run a ball after playing out a dot ball first, and he would score off all but one of his next sixteen. For Berrington, who had been out there since the tenth over, he was the perfect foil, as he was finally starting to adjust to the pitch.
Leask seized the lead after Berrington blew the whistle on the boundary chase with a six and four straight deliveries from Tangeni Lungameni. Having heaved to midwicket for the first of Leask’s four sixes, Erasmus was the first to get it. Then the big one arrived: a 17th over that resulted in a 19. David Wiese, who led Namibia to win in the Super Over against Oman, was sent over the boundary twice by Leask, a move that sandwiched a Berrington four in the same area.
Wiese was regarded with contempt. Leask’s last six was the best of his career; he read a slower ball from Ruben Trumpelmann and returned it to the leg side for a full 101 meters with interest. For the first time in the innings, Scotland’s request was below a run per ball due to the magnitude of the strike exceeding its distance.
After Michael Jones dominated the sixth over, Erasmus made the decision to abandon the chase. They began securing the middle order in Scotland along with Scholtz. Erasmus only played in the vicinity of the wicket, swerving his off breaks over the right-handers to prevent them from swinging straight and reducing their scoring potential. Jones’s feeble endeavor to accomplish so led to a caught behind. On his second try, a distracted Brandon McMullen was stumped after dancing down the field and failed to use his back foot to regain his position.
At the other end, Scholtz was surviving on a wicket-to-wicket line, a cost-effective strategy that resulted in him hitting only one boundary. Matthew Cross was bowled out after trying to sweep a ball that was just a hair too short to sweep in an attempt to remove the restraints. It discussed the fear that Namibia had created at the moment. Following a Powerplay of 43 for 1, 35 for 3 were achieved in the following six overs.
After the game, Erasmus became irate and said, “It would have been better if had come in a win.” Of course, he is correct. It seemed for the longest time that it would. His 52 from 31 had kept the game close until his two wickets sent the chase Namibia’s way. The only other top-order batsman from Namibia to score more than 120 was opener Nikolaas Davin, so the hit was an outlier in a plodding batting performance. As Scotland attempted to slip six balls from Mark Watt in at the conclusion of the powerplay, Erasmus smacked his second ball for six and his third for four at the beginning of the sixth over.
For all seven of his boundaries, the midwicket and point regions were strewn with balls. Who knows how long he could have continued if he had restrained his aggression after slog-sweeping Leask for six the previous time, rather than trying to blast him over his head. He broke JJ Smit’s record of 51 T20I sixes for Namibia with the hit. He would have been a deserving Player of the Match if more had spoken out.
There is still glory for mediums in a competition when out-and-out quicks are already taking up most column inches, as demonstrated by Currie’s exhibition. The 25-year-old has been doing it for a long, playing for Sussex and Scotland both at home. He had an economy rate of 4.94 and a T20I record of 19 dismissals going into this game. Now that he has 2 for 16 from his four overs, the figures have changed. Throughout, Currie had everything under control, alternating between cutters and the occasional cross-seam delivery when delivering stock.
In his opening two overs, the left-armer made use of the swing that was available with the new ball, and Cross stood close to the stumps to keep Davin and Jan Frylinck honest. Frylinck played on while trying to do the same two balls earlier, but Davin was able to impart his own pace on the ball to knock a four through backward point in the fourth over—the lone boundary against Currie. After coming back for the eleventh over, he gave up just three runs off the nineteenth over, varying his lengths to keep the lower order from hitting for a low ball. After Trumpelmann tried to hit a six into the wind, Currie earned a second wicket.
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