A new era dawns for Namibian cricket

A new era dawns for Namibia’s cricket team when they compete in the Africa T20 Cup in Kimberley under a new coach and captain this weekend.

Dee Thakur took over as national coach after Cricket Namibia parted ways with Doug Watson following their failure to qualify for the 2016 T20 World Cup in June.

The youthful Stephan Baard has also been appointed as the national captain, taking over from Nicolaas Scholtz, who himself had taken over from Sarel Burger a year before.

Thakur has been involved with the national team for a long time in various capacities such as selector, manager and assistant coach, as well as coaching junior national teams and the CCD Tigers team that reached the Premier League final last season.

He said it was an honour to be appointed as the national coach and said Cricket Namibia had decided to make a fresh start.

“It’s an honour for me to be the coach of Namibia’s national cricket team. I know the players, and I think we need someone who understands the players and what goes on in the country,” he said.

“At Cricket Namibia we’ve got a feel for that and so far it’s been a wonderful experience, the players are happier and they’ve got their passion back,” he added.

After the disappointment of not qualifying for the T20 World Cup, when Namibia spurned three chances to qualify, Thakur said it was time for a change.

“After what happened in Ireland, we felt it was time for a change. There were things happening that we didn’t see on TV. The team dynamics were not good but we discussed that and now everyone is working in the same direction,” he said.

Regarding the appointment of the 23-year-old Baard as captain, Thakur said he was up for the job.

“Cricket Namibia thought that we want to give Stephan a chance to grow into the job. He has a strong character on and off the field and he proved that by being the top run scorer in Ireland. He put his hand up and accepted the challenge,” he said.

“Apart from his good leadership qualities he is also employed full-time by Cricket Namibia and he is good in all formats of the game. So he has the right qualities to take us through to the 2018 qualifiers for the 2019 World Cup,” he added.

The team that has been selected is largely the same, with the exception of pace bowler Louis Klazinga who has retired, while Raymond van Schoor and JJ Smit were not available due to injury, according to Thakur.

“At the time of selection Raymond and JJ were injured. They have both since recovered but Raymond asked to be excused due to personal reasons which we accepted,” he said.

The South African provincial franchises will compete in the Africa T20 Cup along with Namibia, Kenya and a Zimbabwean A side.

Namibia will compete in Pool C where they will take on Griqualand West and and Kwazulu-Natal on Saturday and Eastern Province on Sunday. The winners of the four pools will qualify for the semifinals and final on 3 and 4 October.

Thakur said they were well prepared and hoped to give a good account of themselves.

“We are well prepared. We played four warm-up matches against a Namibian A team and won them all. Our opposition at the Africa T20 Cup are all professional teams so their level of cricket is a bit higher than the Associate countries, but I think we have prepared quite well and we are ready for the challenge,” he said.

The Namibian team is as follows:

Stephan Baard (captain), Nicolaas Scholtz, JP Kotze, Zhivago Groenewald, Gerhard Erasmus, Bernard Scholtz, Pikky Ya France, Tiaan Snyman, Bredell Wessels, Craig Williams and Sarel Burger.

Dee Thakur is the coach, Norbert Manyande the assistant coach and Andre Schmidlin the team manager.

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