In the fifth T20I played in Windhoek, Namibia defeated Zimbabwe (NAM vs ZIM) by 8 runs to win the 5-match series 3-2. Playing first, Namibia was able to score only 101 after losing all the wickets in 18.4 overs, in reply Zimbabwe’s entire team was all out after scoring 93 runs in 19.2 overs, this is also the team’s joint fourth lowest score in T20I cricket. Namibia’s JJ Smit (29 off 28 balls and 3/14) was named Player of the Match and Zimbabwe’s Sikandar Raza was named Player of the Series for his 177 runs and four wickets in five matches.
Zimbabwe won the toss and elected to bowl first and gave Namibia the chance to bat but they got off to a bad start. Opener Michael van Lingen (0), who played an aggressive innings in the last match, was out on the third ball of the innings. Captain Gerhard Erasmus (6) was dismissed by Richard Ngarwa at the score of 21 in the fifth over. The other opener Nicholas Devlin also got out on the score of 46 in the ninth over after scoring 19 runs in 20 balls. Only Jan Frylink (19), JJ Smit (29) and Zane Green (17) could make useful contributions.
Frylink was out on the score of 46 in the 10th over, Green and Smit were out on the score of 92 in the 16th and 17th overs. The team somehow crossed the 100 mark and collapsed in 18.4 overs. For Zimbabwe, Sikandar Raza took maximum four wickets and Tendai Chatara took three wickets.
In response to the target, Zimbabwe had a very poor start and the team lost four wickets to reach the score of just 12. In the second over, Innocent Kaia 1 and captain Craig Ervin were out without scoring any runs. In the third over, Wesley Madhevere (4) was out at the score of 10 and in the fifth over, Sikandar Raza (2) was also out as the fourth wicket at the score of 12. Nick Welch played an innings of 23 runs before being out on the score of 40 in the 12th over. Ryan Burl (19) departed on the score of 56 in the 15th over.
From here, Luke Jongwe (24) along with Clive Madande (16) made an important partnership of 26 runs and brought Zimbabwe back into the match. This pair was broken by Tangeni Lungameni by dismissing Madande at the score of 82 in the 18th over. In the last two overs, the team needed 17 runs to win and had three wickets left. Jongwe was run out in the 19th over with the score being 93 as the eighth wicket. The other two wickets also fell on the same score and Zimbabwe had to face defeat. Bernard Scholtz and JJ Smit took three wickets each for Namibia.
Let us tell you that this is Namibia’s second consecutive T20I series win against Zimbabwe. Before this, last year also the team had won the five-match series 3-2.
