After their win at La Manga in the Pepsi ICC Division 3 tournament, Belgium has been promoted to Division 2. The Belgium team is now geared up to play in the ICC Division 2 tournament. On June 22, 2014 the National team of Belgium will depart for the latest ICC Europe tournament. Their mission, to win the tournament and make the cricket community in Belgium proud. The team has many talented and is a mix of experience and youth. Chief among them, captain Brighton Watambwa who led the team in La Manga Spain. Brighton leads a squad and promises a good showing against the other teams taking part in this tournament. The tournament will run from June 22 – June 26 and is being played at Essex. The other participating nations are Austria, Germany, Gibraltar, Isle of Man and Norway. The squad is as follows:
- Brighton Watambwa – Captain
- Shahid Muhammad
- Jamie Farmiloe
- Abdul Rehman
- Waqas Shafiq
- Faisal Khaliq
- Shaival Mehta
- Reyhan Faiz
- Simon Newport
- Shahab ud din
- Fahim Bhatti
- Sheik Sheraz
- Soheel Hussain
- Syed Jamil
The first match of Belgium is against Gibraltar, Gibraltar Mens National XI at The Essex County Ground, Chelmsford – 1 on Mon Jun 23, 10:00AM BST
The tounrnament can be followed through in CricHq here
Captain Brighton Watambwa says. After our successful tour to La Manga it is with good spirit and confidence we travel to Essex. The Belgian weather’s been quite kind so we all have a lot more games under our belts which should put us in good stead at the tournament. Our performances in La Manga, while featuring some very good individual performances at times, were perhaps a little below par and we are aiming to have better team performances and consistency in Essex. We have made a few changes to the squad in the hope this will provide the balance we need in the squad and should we perform to our potential there is no reason why this cannot be a good tournament for us. Again we have chosen to combine youth and experience and again we are looking forward to having some big performances from some of the youngsters. Reyhan Faiz in particular was a revelation in La Manga and we hope he can build on what he’s already achieved. Another of our consistent performers, Waqas Shafiq, is another good example of the youth we are looking to develop to take this team forward, and we hope to see good performances from the other youngsters coming on this tour. One big and exciting challenge we will face in Essex is playing on grass wickets. Obviously in Belgium (as most other countries who will be there) we have no turf wickets and it will be quite interesting how we are able to adapt to the different conditions. Games could very well be decided on adopting very different strategies to what we employ playing on artificial surfaces and with a bit of luck we can use this to our advantage. Last but not least, I would like to wish the Belgian Football Team (the Red Devils) all the best at the World Cup. Fortunately we are able to watch the 2 games they will play while we are in Essex and they will have all of our support. Hopefully we can both bring some silverware back home!!!
