Gary Kirsten (File photo)

NEW DELHI: Gary Kirsten spent the Sunday afternoon watching Namibia batters practice range-hitting at the Arun Jaitley Cricket Stadium. This is the venue where, in two days’ time, Gerhard Erasmus-led Namibia will open their T20 World Cup campaign against the Netherlands.The Feroz Shah Kotla ground is not new for Kirsten, who won the 2011 ODI World Cup with India. It was during that campaign at the same venue that India had locked horns with the Netherlands. Fifteen years later, he is back at the National capital with a new team, whom he joined as a consultant a couple of months ago, and the opponent will again be the Dutch.“He obviously knows the conditions well. He knows India well. He has so much knowledge about fields and pitches and the cities and everything,” Namibia captain Gerhard Erasmus told TimesofIndia.com on the sidelines of his team’s practice session. Erasmus also pointed out how Kirsten’s presence has helped him as a skipper of the side, too. “I think what comes down for me as a leader and as a captain, with one foot in the management door and one foot in the players’ door, it’s always so important for me to have the connection between players and the management. As a captain, you have to facilitate that sometimes. When you have a senior member and a mentor like him, I think that resonates well with the players and brings the best out of the players,” the Namibia captain said. This is Namibia’s fourth straight T20 World Cup appearance, and buoyed by the presence of a World Cup-winning coach Gary Kirsten in their corner, they have hit the ground running in their first training session ahead of their opening match of the 2026 T20 World Cup.

Kirsten kept a close eye throughout Namibia’s first practice session in Delhi and had one-on-one conversations with several players of the squad. The Namibia team reached the ground at around 1:30 pm, and had a full-throttle training session. Namibia batters, including captain Gerhard Erasmus, Ruben Trumpelmann, JJ Smit, Jan Frylinck, and Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton focused primarily on range-hitting, polishing their reverse sweeps and scoops. Meanwhile, bowlers were trying to zero in on their death bowling as they tried to sharpen their yorkers and other variations.Gary Kirsten kept providing his valuable inputs to the players throughout the session. “He’s (Kirsten) been helping with everything. There’s not one department that he doesn’t help. He’s a workaholic. He’s helping us the whole time. You know, I mean, for myself as a young coach, learning from someone like him, just unbelievable. So he helps in all departments (whether it’s) fielding, batting, bowling, red soil, black soil, conditions, climates, you know, anything,” Namibian men’s team head coach Craig Williams said after his team’s practice session.

Namibia had beaten Sri Lanka in the T20 World Cup 2022 and got the better of their neighbour, South Africa, last year in the one-off T20 match. But having been placed with India, Pakistan, the USA, and the Netherlands in Group A, Namibia are not thinking “too far ahead” at the moment. “As soon as you think too far ahead, (it) creates a lot of anxiety in the group. So we’re 100% just breaking it down to one-to-one game at a time, one ball at a time. And I suppose at the end of that day you can focus on the next day and then, yeah, we’ll see how the results go,” Williams said ahead of their match against the Netherlands, who put Pakistan under pressure in the opening match of the tournament on Saturday. “We’re 100% thinking about the game against Holland (Netherlands) as our first fixture. And then yeah, there’s 240 balls in the match. If we can win most of those balls, then there’s a good chance for us in the game,” Williams said.Namibia sealed their place at the tournament after a commanding run at the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2026 Africa Qualifier in Harare, finishing as unbeaten Group A toppers and backing it up with a dominant semi-final victory over Tanzania.This is Namibia’s fourth appearance at the men’s T20 World Cup. They had also taken part in the editions in 2021 (Super 12s), 2022 (group stage), and 2024 (group stage).