The preparations are done. The warm-up’s are done. All the hard work put in the past 12-18 months in matches, tournaments, sub-regionals and regional qualifiers has now come to this. The next 3 weeks of main event time will showcase how the game has evolved in the T20 format in the Associate member countries and how much the growth has been and how much the gap has closed between their performances and the performances of full members.
All the 14 participating teams in the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup qualifiers played out their 2nd and final warm-up matches on Oct 15th, and tried out any remaining plans then had to execute before the start of the tournament proper. While the settled teams went about their regular business, the less settled ones took this opportunity to figure out their first-choice XI’s for the opening round of group stage matches.
Brief Scores
Nigeria 96/9 in 20 overs (Adeleke Oyede 35, Daniel Ajeku 16, Christi Viljoen 2/6, Bernard Scholtz 2/17, Craig Williams 2/10, JJ Smit 1/12) lost to Namibia 97/2 in 10.1 overs (Niko Davin 33, Gerhard Erasmus 32 n.o, JP Kotze 20, Daniel Ajeku 1/24) by 8 wickets
Singapore 112 all out in 20 overs (Sidhant Singh 30, Navin Param 28, Surendran Chandramohan 21, Julius Sumerauer 3/20, Anthony Hawkins-Kay 2/14, Dominic Blampied 2/20, Ben Stevens 1/14) lost to Jersey 113/4 in 19.1 overs (Nick Greenwood 46 n.o, Ben Stevens 23, Selladore Vijayakumar 1/15, Timothy David 1/26, Avi Dixit 1/24) by 6 wickets
Canada 191/8 in 20 overs (Nicholas Kirton 61, Navneet Dhaliwal 46, Rizwan Cheema 28, Rodrigo Thomas 22, Hamza Tariq 21, Elijah Otieno 2/28, Shem Ngoche 2/29, Sachin Bhudia 1/22, Pushpak Kerai 1/29) beat Kenya 165/8 in 20 overs (Alex Obanda 46, Rakep Patel 38, Shem Ngoche 19, Jeremy Gordon 3/27, Nikhil Dutta 1/18, Nitish Kumar 1/24) by 26 runs
Scotland 210/8 in 20 overs (George Munsey 86, Oli Haris 39, Matthew Cross 17, David Delany 3/39, George Dockrell 2/36, Gareth Delany 1/33, Stuart Thompson 1/32) beat Ireland 209/9 in 20 overs (Andrew Balbirnie 70, Mark Adair 45, Harry Tector 22, Gary Wilson 22, Hamza Tahir 3/32, Michael Leask 2/49, Alasdair Evans 1/25) by 1 run
Netherlands 169/3 in 20 overs (Ben Cooper 60, Ryan ten Doeschate 36 n.o, Maxwell O’Dowd 31, Tobias Visee 19, Khawar Ali 1/17, Fayyaz Butt 1/29) lost to Oman 170/6 in 19.4 overs (Jatinder Singh 64, Khurram Nawaz 23 n.o, Khawar Ali 21, Sandeep Goud 16 n.o, Roelof van der Merwe 1/20, Pieter Seelaar 1/25, Paul van Meekeren 1/29, Shane Snater 1/30) by 4 wickets
Hong Kong 160/5 in 20 overs (Kinchit Shah 48, Waqas Barkat 33, Ahsan Abbasi 32, Simandeep Singh 21, Kamau Leverock 2/27, Derrick Brangman 1/20, Malachi Jones 1/34) beat Bermuda 136/8 in 20 overs (Janeiro Tucker 29, Deunte Darrell 24, Malachi Jones 23, Delray Rawlins 20 n.o, Waqas Barkat 3/20, Ehsan Khan 2/22, Kinchit Shah 2/34, Aizaz Khan 1/24) by 24 runs
UAE 193/2 in 20 overs (Mohammad Usman 60 retired, Darius D’Silva 43 retired, Waheed Ahmed 36 not out, Muhammad Boota 20 n.o, Jason Kila 1/24, Damien Ravu 1/59) beat Papua New Guinea 178/7 in 20 overs (Sese Bau 40, Tony Ura 33, Charles Amini 27, Kiplin Doriga 25, Assad Vala 22, Waheed Ahmed 3/36, Zahoor Khan 1/28, Junaid Siddique 1/30) by 15 runs
