Namibia without in-form batsmen for UAE game

Namibia will be without opener, Gerhard Randolph and middle-order batsman, Norbert Manyande, for its ICC Intercontinental Shield match against United Arab Emirates starting in Windhoek on Saturday.

Randolph, who has three scores in the 90s in the CSA Provincial 3-day Challenge, and Manyande (two half-centuries) are not residentially qualified to play in the ICC-run tournament and have been replaced by Willem Groenewald and Wian van Vuuren respectively for this match.

The match is the first for both teams in the tournament which is a de facto second division equivalent of the ICC Intercontinental Trophy, from which Namibia were controversially dumped by the ICC.

The teams have had contrasting preparations - Namibia have played five games in the South African amateur three-day provincial competition, where they drew three and lost one while UAE were runners-up in the ACC Twenty20 tournament that they hosted, losing to Afghanistan in the final.

Namibia coach, Johan Randolph, told Cricinfo he was "reasonably happy" with the team's performance in the three-day competition. "We need to establish a culture in Namibia for batsman to occupy the crease and to score hundreds plus, which I believe we have achieved. We had five hundreds and if Gerhard Rudolph converted his three 90s together with Norbert Manyande's 90 we would have had nine hundreds in five matches. Not to bad at all. Already had five hundreds in club cricket so something is working."

The Shield game will be played from December 5 to 8, followed by a 50-over match on December 10 and a Twenty20 game on December 11.

Namibia: - Raymond van Schoor (wk), Willem Groenewald, Sarel Burger, Wian van Vuuren, Craig Williams (capt), Nicholaas Scholtz, LP van der Westhuizen, Wessel Myburgh, Tobie Verwey, Louis Klazinga, Elton Ambambi

UAE: Khuram Khan (capt) Saqib Ali Ahmad Raza, Amjad Javed,Amjad Ali ,Fahad Al Hashimi,Fayaz Ahamed,Arfan Hyder,Mohamed Tauqir ,Mohammed Iqbal,Abdul Rehman (wk), Arshad Ali Qasim Zubair ,Shoaib Sarwar and Mois Shahid