A fabulous four-wicket display from Ruben Trumpelmann was the talk of the cricket town in match 3 of ICC T20 Cricket World Cup 2024. Namibia's left-arm fast bowler breathed fire with the new ball and chipped away with the old one too, to help dismiss Oman for a measly total of 109 runs at the Kensington Oval in Barbados on Monday, June 3. (Match Blog | Streaming | Scorecard)
Trumpelmann wowed one and all with his twin strikes off the first two balls of the match, and then followed it up with his third scalp off his ninth delivery. A fourth wicket followed in the 19th over and the 26-year-old ended with career-best figures of 4-21.
Who Is Ruben Trumpelmann?
This is not the first time that the Namibia speedster struck more than once in the first over of a T20 World Cup. In fact, the left-arm seamer had taken three wickets in the very first over of a 2021 T20 World Cup match against Scotland. With figures of 3-17, Trumpelmann had become the first man in T20 international history to strike thrice in the first over of the T20 showpiece.
Now, with his splendid show in Namibia's 2024 campaign opener, Trumpelmann has reportedly become the first bowler to pick up two wickets off the first two balls of a T20I match.
Earlier, Namibia skipper Gerhard Erasmus won the toss and elected to bowl first against Oman. This is both teams' opening match of this edition, and also their first-ever face-off at the T20 World Cups.
Namibia played three warm-up games in the run-up to the 2024 T20 World Cup. They beat Uganda by five wickets and Papua New Guinea by three runs (DLS method), but lost to Australia by seven wickets.
With Scotland, England and Australia making up the rest of Group B, Namibia and Oman's best bet to advance to Super 8s would be ensuring wins in all the matches not involving heavyweights English and Aussies.
Playing XIs
Namibia: Nikolaas Davin, Michael Van Lingen, Jan Frylinck, Gerhard Erasmus (C), Malan Kruger, JJ Smit, David Wiese, Zane Green (WK), Ruben Trumpelmann, Bernard Scholtz, Tangeni Lungameni.
Oman: Kashyap Prajapati, Naseem Khushi (WK), Aqib Ilyas (C), Zeeshan Maqsood, Khalid Kail, Ayaan Khan, Mohammad Nadeem, Mehran Khan, Shakeel Ahmed, Kaleemullah, Bilal Khan.
