We want to reach levels of Nam cricket – Uganda coach
The last time these two sides met was at the Men’s T20 World Cup Africa Qualifier in Kampala where Namibia came up tops, eventually winning the tournament and also earning themselves a place at the World Cup via the global qualifier in the UAE.
In 2019, Namibia also became an ODI nation going further ahead of Uganda in the ICC rankings establishing themselves as top African favourites. Uganda, who recently toured Namibia, have also made some good strides over the last couple of months, especially since the resumption of sports following the advent of Covid-19.
The Cricket Cranes of Uganda has since moved on to hire South African native Laurence Mahatlane as head coach and improvements have been evident in recent trial games. At last count, a total of 36 matches have been played between October and now, which is much higher than the average number of games an Associate men’s national team gets to play in a season.
However, Mahatlane is aware of the gap between Namibia and Uganda and is realistic of the team’s expectations when compared to Namibia, therefore they want to continue exchanging notes with their Namibian counterparts
‘Namibia is where we want to be, that’s why we wanted to use the Namibia tour to test ourselves on the things we have been working on. Therefore, the purpose of the tour was to find out how far our batting has come, how the young bowlers can cope with pressure from top-class batters and how we can cope against top sides in a match situation.’