Namibia Beat UAE by 8 Wickets — JJ Smit's Four Wickets and van Lingen's 71 Settle It Early in Dallas

Two days after Namibia made 298 at Grand Prairie and still lost, they came back to the same ground and played an entirely different kind of match. There were no big totals this time and no late drama — just a disciplined bowling performance, an opening partnership that settled everything, and a win that came with 24 overs to spare.

United Arab Emirates 134 all out (37.3 overs). Namibia 135/2 (26 overs). Namibia won by 8 wickets with 144 balls remaining. JJ Smit, with 4 for 29 from his ten overs, was Player of the Match.

Namibia chose to field and JJ Smit struck in the second over, Adeeb Usmani caught by Ruben Trumpelmann for 0. Tanish Suri counter-attacked with three sixes in 29 from 22 balls before Bernard Scholtz had him caught by van Lingen in the seventh over, and Smit removed Harpreet Singh in the eighth. The UAE were 43 for 3 after the first powerplay.

The four Namibian bowlers who did the heavy lifting, Smit, Scholtz, Trumpelmann and Jack Brassell, bowled 36.3 overs between them for 125 and shared all ten wickets. Scholtz's nine overs went for 24. Brassell, who went for 84 against USA two days earlier, bowled nine overs for 29 and took the wicket of Muhammad Shahdad. Zane Green held two catches behind the stumps.

The chase was almost serene. Michael van Lingen and Louren Steenkamp made 57 without loss in the first powerplay and were 102 for 0 at the drinks break after 18 overs. Van Lingen reached fifty from 53 balls with seven fours. Steenkamp fell for 35 at 106, caught behind off Ali Naseer, and van Lingen for 71 at 126, caught off Basil Hameed, but Jan Frylinck (14 not out) and Gerhard Erasmus (6 not out) finished it in the 26th over.

The UAE had moments of recovery but could never string them together. After 43 for 3, Muhammad Shahdad and Rahul Chopra steadied things to 75 before Brassell bowled Shahdad in the 18th over, and Akshdeep Nath went for 0 four balls later, caught and bowled by Scholtz. Chopra (28 from 55) and Aayan Afzal Khan took the score to 103, and then the innings fell away: four wickets for seven runs, from 103 for 5 to 110 for 9 in the 31st over, all four of them to Smit and Trumpelmann.

To their credit, Basil Hameed and Ali Naseer added 24 for the last wicket, Naseer hitting a six before Trumpelmann bowled him in the 38th over. With the ball, Naseer and Hameed both took a wicket, but 134 left them nothing to defend once Namibia's openers settled.

We weren't at the ground. Two days after 597 runs were scored here for 15 wickets, this match produced 269 runs for 12, so it's fair to say the bowlers had more to work with — or that the UAE's batting couldn't match what the same ground had allowed earlier in the week. Namibia, chasing, made 57 for 0 in their first ten overs, against the UAE's 43 for 3, so whatever the pitch offered, Namibia made far better use of the first ten overs with both bat and ball.

Smit's four wickets told the story of the UAE innings in instalments. He took the first, in the second over. He took the third, in the eighth, as the UAE were trying to reset after Suri's sixes. And he returned to take two of the four that fell for seven runs in the collapse, Aayan Afzal Khan and Khuzaima Tanveer. Ten overs, one maiden, 29 runs.

Bowling, at its best, is the art of being there at the beginning and still being there at the end. Smit was both, and the UAE never found a way past him.

This match didn't have a CricIntel preview, so there is no prediction to grade.

The win takes Namibia to 31 points from 35 matches (14 wins, net run rate -0.293), fifth in the League 2 table, two behind Oman, who have played six fewer games. The UAE stay eighth and last with 19 points from 31 matches (8 wins, net run rate -0.908). At the top, United States lead on 47 points, with Scotland on 45 and Netherlands on 38.