Preview: T20 World Cup: Australia vs. Namibia

Sports Mole previews the 2024 T20 World Cup match between Australia and Namibia, scheduled to be played at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on Wednesday.

Australia will look to maintain their perfect record in the 2024 T20 World Cup when they take on Namibia at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium on Wednesday morning.

The Aussies will enter this match in second place in Group B with two wins in two games, while Namibia are third and one point above the defending champions England.

Match preview
© Reuters

Group B has already delivered several surprises in this year’s competition, none more so than Scotland remaining unbeaten after three games, albeit that their most recent one was abandoned due to rain.

What has been unsurprising, though, has been the performance of Australia, who can book their place in the Super Eight with a victory here, after winning their first two matches with relative ease.

The Baggy Greens’ first victory came against Oman, where Marcus Stoinis put in a Man of the Match performance, scoring 67* to help his side set a target of 165 before bagging 3/19 with the ball to restrict the association side to 125/9.

Mitchell Marsh’s side then took aim at the defending champions England over the weekend and managed to post the highest score in this competition to date of 201/7, which proved too much for the Three Lions, who only managed 165/6 in response.

The Aussies now have to take on Namibia, who they faced during their warm-up campaign and beat by seven wickets and a whopping 10 overs to spare.

Meanwhile, regardless of where Namibia end in this year’s T20 World Cup, they will have at least one fond memory of the tournament, and that came in their opening match, which they won in the first super over of the competition since 2012 against Oman.

Former South African and Sussex player David Wiese was instrumental with both bat and ball on the day and led his side to their fourth T20 World Cup win in the last two editions of the competition.

Unfortunately, despite another solid batting performance in match two, the Eagles were unable to maintain their unbeaten record, losing by five wickets to Scotland last week at the Kensington Oval.

While very few are giving Namibia a realistic chance in this match, the Eagles have won nine games against Test-playing nations, including seven against Zimbabwe, and one each versus Ireland and Sri Lanka.

Team News
© Reuters

After a fairly underwhelming Indian Premier League campaign, David Warner has looked very impressive at the top of the order for Australia in this competition, forming a solid partnership with Travis Head, who finished fourth in the leading run-scorer standings at the IPL.

Despite Stoinis’s excellent performance in the opening match, Adam Zampa has arguably been the pick of the bowlers for the Aussies over the first two matches. The spinner took two wickets in each game at an economy rate of just 6.5.

Namibia opted to bring in Jean-Pierre Kotze to open the batting in the last match against Scotland, but he was dismissed for a duck after just three balls, which could see him drop back to the bench for Michael van Lingen, who started in the victory against Oman.

Gerhard Erasmus became the first Eagles player to score a half-century in the competition this year and will need another captain’s knock here to give his side any chance of challenging the mighty Aussies.

Australia squad: Mitchell Marsh (c), Ashton Agar, Pat Cummins, Tim David, Nathan Ellis, Cameron Green, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis (wk), Glenn Maxwell, Mitchell Starc, Marcus Stoinis, Matthew Wade (wk), David Warner, Adam Zampa. Travelling reserves: Jake Fraser-McGurk, Matthew Short.

Namibia squad: Namibia squad: Gerhard Erasmus (c), Zane Green, Michael Van Lingen, Dylan Leicher, Ruben Trumpelmann, Jack Brassell, Ben Shikongo, Tangeni Lungameni, Niko Davin, JJ Smit, Jan Frylinck, JP Kotze, David Wiese, Bernard Scholtz, Malan Kruger, PD Blignaut

Series so far
Australia

Match One: Australia won by 39 runs
Australia – 164/5 (20)
Oman – 125/9 (20)

Match Two: Australia won by 36 runs
Australia – 201/7 (20)
England – 165/6 (20)

Namibia

Match One: Namibia won the super over by 11 runs
Oman – 108 & 10/1
Namibia – 106/6 & 21/0

Match Two: Namibia lost by 5 wickets
Namibia – 155/9 (20)
Scotland – 157/5 (18.3)

We say: Australia to win
While this year’s tournament has already thrown up several surprise results, none of them have involved Australia, who are already looking like the team to beat. Indeed, Namibia are well capable of upsetting the odds against the bigger teams but we feel they will be no match for the Aussies in this one.

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