Cricketers return to hero’s welcome

THE Namibian u19 cricket team was welcomed home as heroes after returning from the u19 Cricket World Cup in Bangladesh on Sunday.

Cricket Namibia (CN) organised a welcoming reception, complete with balloons, biltong and champagne, while about 100 friends, relatives and fans turned up at Hosea Kutako International Airport to welcome them home.

In Bangladesh, Namibia gave their best-ever performance to finish seventh, while also beating the defending champions South Africa in the process and CN president Richard Frankle said they had done Namibia proud.

“These boys have gone thousands of kilometres away and made Namibia proud. I’d like to thank the management and coaches for their effort, it’s truly pleasing to see such a wonderful result from the effort that you put in,” he said.

“We need to put the achievement of this team in the right context. There are 10 test playing nations in cricket, 38 Associate members and 57 Affiliate countries and out of all of these we came seventh – that’s a remarkable achievement and we can be very proud.

“But their achievement goes further than that, it’s also how the carried themselves off the field and I can say with pride that they behaved themselves unbelievably well,” he added.

The manager of the team, Andre Schmidlin described the players as his family, saying they had built up a strong bond.

“Boys, we will always be family, and this bond will always remain – to the parents, you raised some well behaved boys,” he said.

He said the team drew its biggest inspiration from all the support it got via Whatsapp and social media and that they had made a name for Namibia.

“Everyone saw us as the underdogs but when we beat the defending champions, South Africa, we knew we had made a name for Namibia. We stepped up and showed that we can compete and Namibian cricket will not be disregarded any more.”

The team captain Zane Green couldn’t hide his pride.

“Thanks to all the support and from the media as well. To the players, I’m so proud of you guys, I love you boys.”

Team coach Norbert Manyande said it was amazing experience, while he had also learnt a lot.

“For me it was a privilege coaching them and they made us proud. It was an amazing experience and some memories we will keep for the rest of our lives,” he said.

“I sat in the bus before the South Africa game and when I saw how focussed and serious the guys were I knew they were going to win. The way we fought back was amazing and it was also a massive learning curve for me. We’ve got some serious characters in this team and it’s very important to keep them together for the future,” he added.

The CEO of Cricket Namibia, Dr Donovan Zealand said the seeds for the team’s success had been planted a long time ago.

“When you start on a journey like this people always look at the results. We did remarkably well but this journey started one and a half years ago and it was not a fluke. A lot of sacrifices were made, also by the parents and extended families – if you play cricket at this level, the whole family becomes impacted by cricket. They have come a long way from u11 level and the sacrifices they have made is applaudable,” he said.

Dr Zealand said Cricket Namibia wanted to become the best sport code in Namibia and they had to live up to high expectations now.

“We must now strive to be consistently great. We’ll start preparing soon for the next World Cup in 2018. We want to excel internationally and we want to be the best sport code in Namibia,” he said.

“Going forward and preparing the next group, we will definitely have high expectations to do well. When they left many people said this was the weakest u19 team in a long time, but they showed character and determination. It’s not always the big names, but how the team plays together,” he added.