A composed fifty from captain Gerhard Erasmus and a cameo from David Wiese helped Namibia defeat Ireland by eight wickets and reach the Super 12 round in their first-ever T20 World Cup at Sharjah on Friday. 

Chasing 126 runs, Erasmus scored his sixth international fifty and finished unbeaten on 53 from 49 deliveries while Wiese scored a quickfire 28 from 14 deliveries to seal a historic win for the World Cup debutants. 

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Namibia had another stuttering start in their chase, scoring slowly as boundaries were hard to come by in the first ten overs, from which they scored just 49 runs. But Erasmus and Zane Green (24) added 48 runs for the third wicket to keep Namibia in the contest.  

The two held their nerves through a time time in the chase and played smart cricket, rotating the strike effectively to prevent the asking rate from shooting up. Their contributions saw the equation being reduced to 55 from 42 deliveries, at which point with nine wickets in hand, Namibia were favourites. 

But Green failed to clear Kevin O’Brien at mid-off to make the contest interesting.

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After his two wickets with the ball, Wiese came to Namibia’s rescue by hitting Craig Young for back-to-back sixes in the 15th over to bring down the equation to 33 off the last five overs.

Needing 21 off 18 balls, Erasmus lofted off-spinner Simi Singh over the long-off boundary and then struck two boundaries in the 19th over off Craig Young to finish off the chase in style with nine balls remaining.

Namibia have joined Sri Lanka in the Super 12s from Group A.

Earlier, asked to bowl, the Namibian bowlers made a strong comeback after Ireland made a brisk start to restrict them to a modest 125 for eight. Ireland started brightly with Paul Stirling (38) and Kevin O’Brien (25) sharing 62 runs off just 44 balls for the opening stand.

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But Namibia removed both openers in quick succession, and Ireland never recovered from there on. The only meaningful contribution came from skipper Andrew Balbirnie (21), with no other batsman reaching double figures. 

Jan Frylinck was the pick of the bowlers, picking three wickets for 21 runs, while Wiese also took two wickets for 22 runs.