T20 World Cup: Namibia financial institution on expertise of India’s 2011 World Cup-winning coach Gary Kirsten | Cricket Information – The Occasions of India – Imperial Wire

Gary Kirsten (File photograph)

NEW DELHI: Gary Kirsten spent the Sunday afternoon watching Namibia batters observe range-hitting on the Arun Jaitley Cricket Stadium. That is the venue the place, in two days’ time, Gerhard Erasmus-led Namibia will open their T20 World Cup marketing campaign towards the Netherlands.The Feroz Shah Kotla floor will not be new for Kirsten, who received the 2011 ODI World Cup with India. It was throughout that marketing campaign on the identical venue that India had locked horns with the Netherlands. Fifteen years later, he’s again on the Nationwide capital with a brand new crew, whom he joined as a advisor a few months in the past, and the opponent will once more be the Dutch.“He clearly is aware of the situations effectively. He is aware of India effectively. He has a lot data about fields and pitches and the cities and every thing,” Namibia captain Gerhard Erasmus advised TimesofIndia.com on the sidelines of his crew’s observe session. Erasmus additionally identified how Kirsten’s presence has helped him as a skipper of the aspect, too. “I believe what comes down for me as a pacesetter and as a captain, with one foot within the administration door and one foot within the gamers’ door, it is all the time so vital for me to have the connection between gamers and the administration. As a captain, it’s a must to facilitate that typically. When you have got a senior member and a mentor like him, I believe that resonates effectively with the gamers and brings the very best out of the gamers,” the Namibia captain mentioned. That is Namibia’s fourth straight T20 World Cup look, and buoyed by the presence of a World Cup-winning coach Gary Kirsten of their nook, they’ve hit the bottom working of their first coaching session forward of their opening match of the 2026 T20 World Cup.

Kirsten stored an in depth eye all through Namibia’s first observe session in Delhi and had one-on-one conversations with a number of gamers of the squad. The Namibia crew reached the bottom at round 1:30 pm, and had a full-throttle coaching session. Namibia batters, together with captain Gerhard Erasmus, Ruben Trumpelmann, JJ Smit, Jan Frylinck, and Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton targeted totally on range-hitting, sharpening their reverse sweeps and scoops. In the meantime, bowlers had been making an attempt to zero in on their demise bowling as they tried to sharpen their yorkers and different variations.Gary Kirsten stored offering his useful inputs to the gamers all through the session. “He is (Kirsten) been serving to with every thing. There’s not one division that he does not assist. He is a workaholic. He is serving to us the entire time. You realize, I imply, for myself as a younger coach, studying from somebody like him, simply unbelievable. So he helps in all departments (whether or not it is) fielding, batting, bowling, purple soil, black soil, situations, climates, you realize, something,” Namibian males’s crew head coach Craig Williams mentioned after his crew’s observe session.

Namibia had crushed Sri Lanka within the T20 World Cup 2022 and acquired the higher of their neighbour, South Africa, final yr within the one-off T20 match. However having been positioned with India, Pakistan, the USA, and the Netherlands in Group A, Namibia usually are not pondering “too far forward” in the intervening time. “As quickly as you assume too far forward, (it) creates a number of nervousness within the group. So we’re 100% simply breaking it all the way down to one-to-one sport at a time, one ball at a time. And I suppose on the finish of that day you possibly can deal with the following day after which, yeah, we’ll see how the outcomes go,” Williams mentioned forward of their match towards the Netherlands, who put Pakistan beneath stress within the opening match of the event on Saturday. “We’re 100% interested by the sport towards Holland (Netherlands) as our first fixture. After which yeah, there’s 240 balls within the match. If we will win most of these balls, then there is a good likelihood for us within the sport,” Williams mentioned.Namibia sealed their place on the event after a commanding run on the ICC Males’s T20 World Cup 2026 Africa Qualifier in Harare, ending as unbeaten Group A toppers and backing it up with a dominant semi-final victory over Tanzania.That is Namibia’s fourth look on the males’s T20 World Cup. They’d additionally taken half within the editions in 2021 (Tremendous 12s), 2022 (group stage), and 2024 (group stage).