Portal:Namibia/Featured article/1

From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Jump to: navigation, search

The Namibia cricket team is the team that represents Namibia in international cricket matches. It is governed by Cricket Namibia, an associate member of the International Cricket Council since 1992 and became part of the High Performance Program in 2007. They took part in the 2003 Cricket World Cup in South Africa, though they lost all their games. They have played in each edition of the ICC Intercontinental Cup.

The first mention of cricket being played in what is now Namibia was a match played between South African soldiers and locals near Otjiwarongo in 1915 shortly after the occupying Germans had surrendered to the South African troops. The outcome of World War I left South Africa as the holder of the League of Nations mandate for the region, now renamed South-West Africa.

South Africans moving into the country meant that more and more cricket clubs began to be formed, but it was not until 1954 when the South-West Africa representative side first played, playing Liesbeek Park, a club side from Cape Town. The South-West Africa team, whilst never formally being part of the then South Africa Cricket Union, played at low levels of South Africa domestic cricket for many years until 1989. (Read more...)