Dubai: Namibia skipper Sarel Burger has appealed for more teams to be included in the Twenty20 World Cup. His team failed to qualify for the World Cup despite a string of seven victories and a fine performance in the qualifiers.
"We made people proud by the way we played in this tournament. It is very sad that only two teams will go through to the World Cup. Personally I feel more teams should be given the chance to play against the best. With 16 teams competing against each other, if we take ourselves as an example, we do the whole tournament very well and we fail to qualify because we just lost the last two games in the end is sad. We don't actually get the reward for coming third and don't also get the chance to play against the best in the world. I think they must implement to make smaller teams like ourselves getting the chance to show ourselves on top."
Burger sportingly praised Ireland's performance and said: "Ireland bowled outstandingly and played well throughout. It was the right decision to bat first. Unfortunately we did not end up scoring the runs we should have. There was a lot of anticipation and excitement. Maybe due to big expectations, one tends to get carried away. A lot of times you put yourself under a lot of pressure. I think the sad part is we had the momentum very early on; unfortunately it started running out towards the end. It was a great learning curve for the younger players and even the senior players. We have got the ICC Intercontinental Cup to look forward to."
