Namibia captain Gerhard Erasmus won the toss and elected to bowl first against Oman, in the third match of ICC T20 World Cup 2024 on Monday (June 3). The match is being played at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados. (Match Blog | Streaming | Scorecard)
Explaining his rationale for fielding first, Erasmus said that due to the rain around, his team will will look to gather some information early on. He added that Namibia have prepared really well and will look to showcase that now.
"It is a good thing that we have played against Oman recently. You need to execute well to earn points," Erasmus said.
His Oman counterpart Aqib Ilyas said: "It's good to bat on a fresh wicket and the ball will come on nicely in the night. Really good to play, lots of plans but this is the time to execute it. Everyone is fit."
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.
Namibia have advanced to their third successive T20 World Cup on the back of an unbeaten campaign at the Africa qualifier, where they won all six of their games. Oman, on the other hand, sealed their berth by making it to the ACC Premier Cup final. Though they lost to UAE in the final, Oman won five games on the bounce at the tournament.
