Applause for Cricket Namibia

LIMBA MUPETAMI – People ask me which sport code I love the most, and I can’t think of any. Really, I watch everything.

I think it’s just the euphoria of seeing people’s emotions that triggers my interest.

On a good day I can sit and watch UFC, or gymnastics. The art of the latter fascinates me. These days I’m watching a lot of cricket.

My uncle introduced me to the sport, he explained it and from a young age, I have just been captured.

I explain how the game is played to generally anyone who wants to understand the sport. It’s quite easy. With everything else, it’s difficult to understand if you don’t know. But once you get the hang of it, it’s easy to understand.

Talking about cricket. Last week Friday, I wrote a piece about a cricket fan, who found herself catching the T20 Cricket World Cup as she was in the location where it is being played.

This lady wasn’t deterred by the fact that she was one of just a handful of spectators supporting Namibia. She wore a dress in the colours of the national flag, and she celebrated like her life depended on it.

It wasn’t hard to miss her in the stadium. Namibian colours really just stand out.

True daughter of the soil. She even bought some Namibian flags and distributed them among the other spectators, just to cheer the team on.

She even changed her travel plans to stay a little longer. I call her the number one cricket fan. It’s really just nice to see people uniting in the spirit of sport.

Sport really does things to people.

She shared her experience on her social media pages and of course sparked a bit more interest about the game among her followers. Bit by bit closing the gap which previously defined the game as one only for men, and white men to put in candidly.

But certain sports codes have evolved, and Cricket Namibia’s quest to improve the performance of the players as well as the reach of the sport has truly grown.

There is more engagement. Cricket is one of the sports codes that one can really applaud for being consistent and staying true to the times of change. My hope in the future is that the number of cricket clubs in Namibia will grow from five and that the facilities can be improved for the better.

I also hope that the outreach programme continues to get the financial support it deserves in order to garner more players. I believe after the world cup that sponsors can see the effort Cricket Namibia is putting making sure that players are developed. More so, I hope our players can go on to play cricket professionally. We really have talent in the squad, with more talent about to come through. For the men’s and women’s teams.

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