CRICKET Namibia has moved forward after receiving international recognition. It is expected that the sport code will see great things over the next few year.
Johan Muller, Cricket Namibia CEO, announced several new projects and international events at a press conference held on Saturday to celebrate CN winning two awards at the Namibia Sport Awards. They won the Federation of the Year (and the Development Programme of the Year) awards.
“We are also here to celebrate the announcements by the International Cricket Council (ICC) that Namibia will co-host two world cups – the ICC u19 Men’s World Cup in 2026 and the ICC Men’s World Cup in 2027. A world cup event is not just there for Cricket Namibia, it’s there for the whole country – it circulates revenue and the total economic impact will be massive and the opportunities to promote the country will be enormous,” he said.
“But to host these events, we need infrastructure and that is what we are glad to announce today, that after two years of a battle with the City of Windhoek, we finally got the council to approve new land where we can build our own international cricket facility,” he added.
“Currently we are renting facilities from clubs and this year we had 43 international matches in Namibia this year, so now once we have built that we will be able to host it on an international ground,” he said.
“We started with the engineers on site this week, and they will start with the roll-out of the facility in January. We will plant the pitches and grass by April, and then we will begin the planning and development phase for the buildings. We want to play cricket at that facility in August next year, so it’s exciting times for us,” he added.
Muller stated that Namibia’s men rank 14th in both the T20-over and 50-over formats. While the women are ranked 18th, the men of Namibia are currently ranked 14th. He stressed that in order to maintain these levels, it was important to invest in the sport and to further develop it. He cited their efforts at Kuisebmond in Walvis Bay where a world-class indoor facility had been constructed.
“Kuisebmond is a celebration for us – it produces almost 80 percent of our national women’s players, but their facility was underdeveloped for a number of years, so we decided to put our resources into the development of it and now the nets they have there are probably some of the best net facilities in the country,” he said.
“The academy centre is in the middle of the Kuisebmond, which now gives walking distance access to all of our girls and boys programmes. Now we can produce excellence, because we don’t just want to compete, we want to excel,” he added.
Source: namibian
