Capricorn Eagles await busy schedule
By Michael Uugwanga
FRESH from defeat in the final of the 2021 Kwibuka women’s Twenty20 tournament to Kenya on June 11 in Kigali, Namibia senior women cricket side, the Capricorn Eagles has a busy schedule ahead of them.
Namibia lost to Kenya by seven wickets.
Speaking to Confidente Sport, Cricket Namibia chief executive officer, Johan Muller said there are a lot of cricket activities awaiting the Capricorn Eagles after saying that the team performed ‘exceptionally well’ at the Kwibuka tournament.
“We are very much proud of our women team.
They played five exceptional good cricket matches. Unfortunately we did not play good cricket the last one in the final.
We will be very honest upfront to say we did not play our best cricket in the final, something we will look to address, but you can evaluate our success in different ways. We outplayed the opposition in the five matches.
“Our women cricket is progressing very quickly.
We have the Uganda tournament early August and hopefully that country opens up again and we have that tournament. We are also talking to Zimbabwe to play and host five nations Twenty20 series in Namibia, then it is the Twenty20 qualifiers end of November and then we will be looking to the Commonwealth Games qualifiers in January.
So it is quite a busy programme for them and they will only improve if they keep playing,” he said.
Despite the defeat, five Namibian players were named in the Kwibuka team of the tournament namely; Sune Wittmann, Yasmeen Khan, Adri van der Merwe, Kayleen-Ann Green and Victoria Hamunyela, while top class batswoman Wittmann collected two individual awards, Sixer of Tournament award and Best Batter award after scoring 167 runs.
Wittmann received trophies and classy mobile phones.
Team captain Irene van Zyl, said despite losing in the final, she was happy with the team’s performance.
“We are happy with our performance at the Kwibuka tournament. I felt we did play good cricket overall as everyone strived well at the tournament as it was a learning curve for everyone and having a new coach things do not happen overnight.
Although things did not go our way in the last game but that will not let us fall back as we are going to come back stronger.”
Coach of the Capricorn Eagles, Fracois van der Merwe said the skill level of his team was top class.
“The skill level of the women was exceptionally well, unfortunately on the final day things did not happen to us as we came unstuck, but that is what happens in Twenty20 cricket and on the day we were just not good enough.
It was a learning curve as we did not play international cricket for the last 18 months. As a coach, I am very satisfied … very good youngsters that came through the system”.