Former South African coach Bob Woolmer, who oversees the progress of the minnows, said Namibia’s fight against England at Port Elizabeth on Wednesday proved him right.
Namibia lost by 55 runs, restricting their opponents to a total of 272 when many expected England to post in excess of 300.
Namibia, batting second, then took the game to the last ball of the match with England unable to bowl them out as they finished on 217 for nine.
That innings featured a superb knock of 85 by opener Jan-Berry Burger that rattled England.
Had the dark clouds broken it might even have been enough for Namibia to have pulled off a sensational victory under the Duckworth-Lewis rule that governs the outcome of rain-affected matches.
It was a performance the watching Woolmer enjoyed.
“I was very pleased with the whole Namibian performance. If you went to the ground today and didn’t know who was playing you’d have said there was a good game of cricket going on.
“This was the first time they’d batted with real authority — that’s the biggest difference between the junior or associate nations and the Test sides.
“A lot of these smaller teams don’t play and three-day cricket where you really learn to bat.”
Proving Woolmer’s point were Canada, bowled out for a One-day International record low total of 36 by Sri Lanka at Boland Park, Paarl, on Wednesday.
But Woolmer said the performance of Canada, who created one of this tournament’s biggest shocks when they beat Test new boys Bangladesh by 60 runs in their World Cup opener, had to be put into context.
“Canada have done well. I’m not surprised they got rolled over because that’s what going to happen to these teams from time to time.”
And the big challenge for Woolmer is to ensure the gains made by the likes of Canada are not lost by the time of the next World Cup, in 2007, in the West Indies.
“The high-performance unit will continue after the World Cup.
“Some of the plans are still on the drawing board but we hope to have them playing three-day matches and get ‘A’ (reserve team) tours by the major nations to these countries.
“We’ve also got plans for an inter-continental cup where teams from Asia, Africa, Europe and the Americas will play other teams from their regions before going into a knockout event against one another.”
England have been unimpressive in their two tournament matches so far, a six-wicket win over Holland and Wednesday’s hard-fought victory against Namibia.
But former England batsman Woolmer, 54, said the team’s supporters should not be downhearted.
“I think it’s very difficult to quantify how you should play against these minnow sides.
“People expect them to be whitewashed but the whole point of the high performance unit is that this doesn’t happen.
“But don’t take it away from England. They won both games comfortably and they’ve still got a powerful side.
“England have got eight points from two games and you can’t fart against thunder as my mother used to say.”—AFP