PRESTON Mommsen, the Scotland captain, last night hailed the bowling heroics of Safy Sharif after his side took another step closer to qualification for the World Cup.
Sharif claimed four wickets as the Scots won their rain-affected match with Namibia by 21 runs at the Bert Sutcliffe Oval, Lincoln.
Resuming on 59-2 and needing 221 more runs for victory, the Namibians were on course after Craig Williams (57) and Nicolaas Scholtz (38) put on 80 for the fourth wicket. But Sharif produced a devastating burst of pace bowling to put Scotland back in charge. The Falkland bowler clean-bowled both men in the space of two overs and went on to finish with figure of four for 55 to leave Scotland second in the Super Six table.
"Namibia put a really good partnership together and we were struggling to get a breakthrough," said Mommsen. "But Sharif had a brilliant spell towards the back end and I think that's what won us the game."
Scotland had scored 279-9 on the first day with Matt Machan and Richie Berrington both hitting half-centuries and Mommsen is delighted with the contributions all his main batsmen have made. "Scoring enough runs has been a problem for us in the past but the guys have been doing brilliantly and making meaningful scores," he added.
The Scots will take another big stride towards qualification for next year's tournament if they can defeat Papua New Guinea this morning. PNG qualified for the Super Six stage as Group B winners, beating Namibia, Kenya and Uganda, while in Lega Siaka, the former Grange overseas amateur, they have one of the most dangerous batsmen in the tournament.
Their pace bowling attack is spearheaded by Willie Gavera who had a spell with Aberdeenshire in 2010.
Why are you making commenting on The Herald only available to subscribers?
It should have been a safe space for informed debate, somewhere for readers to discuss issues around the biggest stories of the day, but all too often the below the line comments on most websites have become bogged down by off-topic discussions and abuse.
heraldscotland.com is tackling this problem by allowing only subscribers to comment.
We are doing this to improve the experience for our loyal readers and we believe it will reduce the ability of trolls and troublemakers, who occasionally find their way onto our site, to abuse our journalists and readers. We also hope it will help the comments section fulfil its promise as a part of Scotland's conversation with itself.
We are lucky at The Herald. We are read by an informed, educated readership who can add their knowledge and insights to our stories.
That is invaluable.
We are making the subscriber-only change to support our valued readers, who tell us they don't want the site cluttered up with irrelevant comments, untruths and abuse.
In the past, the journalist’s job was to collect and distribute information to the audience. Technology means that readers can shape a discussion. We look forward to hearing from you on heraldscotland.com
Comments & Moderation
Readers’ comments: You are personally liable for the content of any comments you upload to this website, so please act responsibly. We do not pre-moderate or monitor readers’ comments appearing on our websites, but we do post-moderate in response to complaints we receive or otherwise when a potential problem comes to our attention. You can make a complaint by using the ‘report this post’ link . We may then apply our discretion under the user terms to amend or delete comments.
Post moderation is undertaken full-time 9am-6pm on weekdays, and on a part-time basis outwith those hours.
Read the rules hereComments are closed on this article