| Otis Finck: Zhivago Groenewaldt aged sixteen, has added his name into the Namibian cricket history books by becoming one of the youngest ever cricketers to play for Namibia at International level.
Namibia Cricket Pre-sident Mr. Laurie Pieters confirmed that Groene-waldt joined an elite group of about ten players that represented Namibia on international level at the age of sixteen. Bjorn Kotze aged 15 years and ten months is officially the youngest player ever to represent Namibia on International level. He played his first Match for Namibia against Malaysia. Other players on the list include Jan Berry Bur-ger, Vian Van Vuuren, Stephan Swanepoel and Burton Van Vuuren. Zhivago a left-handed medium pace bowler and batsman took to the field for the Namibian Desert Vipers against the Tuskers in the third/fourth place playoff match in the recently concluded Pro 20 Series Tour-nament hosted by Zimbabwe. Namibia won the match and the victory ensured that they finish-ed in the third place at the tournament. The Namibians played six games of which they won three against the Southern Rocks, the Rhinos and the Tuskers. They lost two games against the Moun-taineers and the Eagles and had to settle for a draw against the Tuskers after the game rained out. He will be in action for the Blue Whales cricket club from Walvis Bay in the Namibian Premier Cric-ket League. The Blue Whales will be up against United I and the Khomas Strikers in their last two league matches. The Blue Whales have to win these two games in order to qualify for a place in the semi-final round of the Premier League. India's Sachin Tendulkar made his debut on 11 December 1988. He was aged 15 years and 232 days. On his Test debut, Sachin Tendulkar was the third youngest debu-tant (16y 205d). Mushtaq Mohammed (15y 124d) and Aaqib Javed (16y 189d) debuted in Test matches younger to Tendulkar. Since then, there have been 2 players who were younger than Sachin on their Test Cricket debut: Hasan Raza - Pakistan (14y 227d), the current youngest debutant, and Mohammed Sharif - Bangladesh (15y 128d). Muhammed Aamer (born 13 April 1992) is a Pakistani left arm fast bowler who played his first professional cricket game at the age of 17 in the 2009 ICC World Twenty20. He helped the Pakistan cricket team to win the tournament. Aamer was the youngest player to compete in the tournament, where his debut match was against England. Twenty20 is a form of cricket, originally intro-duced in the United Kingdom for professional inter-county competition by the England and Wales Cric-ket Board (ECB), in 2003. A Twenty20 game in-volves two teams; each has a single innings, batting for a maximum of 20 overs. Twenty20 cricket is also known as T20 cricket.
A Twenty20 game is completed in about three and half hours, with each innings lasting around 75 minutes, thus bringing the game closer to the timespan of other popular team sports. It was in-troduced to create a lively form of the game, which would be attractive to spectators at the ground and viewers on television, and as such, it has been very successful. The ECB did not intend that Twenty20 would replace other forms of cricket and these have continued alongside it. Since its inception the game has spread around the cricket world. On most international tours there is at least one Twenty20 match and most Test-playing nations have a domestic cup competi-tion. The inaugural World Twenty20 was played in South Africa in 2007 with India defeating Pakistan in the final by five runs. Pakistan again featured in the final of the 2009 World Twenty20, this time against Sri Lanka, winning by eight wickets. Zhivago Groenewaldt with S.S.S. De Duine Headmaster Mr Van Wyk who congratulated the cricketer for his outstanding achievement . |
