KAMPALA, May 24 (Xinhua) -- Namibia and Kenya have qualified for the Twenty20 Cricket World Cup global qualifiers after they emerged winners of the African final qualifiers that ended here on Friday.
Namibia who won three games against Ghana, Botswana and hosts Uganda also benefited two points from draws against Nigeria and Kenya because of the unplayable wet grounds.
The Namibia team finished top with 8 points with a better Net Run Rate (NRR) of 4.547 than Kenya who came second with the same number of points but a lower NRR of 1.363.
"We are glad that we have topped these qualifiers and now our attention moves to the global qualifiers. It is bad that the wet ground did not give us chance to play two games because it would have helped with more exposure of the team," Namibia's senior player Gerhard Erasmus told Xinhua on Friday.
Kenya's captain Shem Ngoche said beating rivals Uganda by just one run was their turning point in the qualifiers.
"We are happy to make it to the next level, but we have to keep training hard because we are going to face very tough teams in United Arab Emirates," added the captain. United Arab Emirates (UAE) will host the global qualifiers scheduled to run Oct. 11-Nov. 3.
Nigeria finished third with six points, while the hosts Uganda came fourth with five points. Botswana collected two points and Ghana one point.
Namibia and Kenya will now join Papua New Guinea, UAE, China's Hong Kong, Ireland, Netherlands, Oman, Scotland and Zimbabwe in the global qualifiers where six top teams will advance to the Twenty20 World Cup in Australia in October 2020.
