NORTH SOUND – Ruth­less Aus­tralia be­came the sec­ond team to qual­i­fy for the Su­per Eight quar­ter­fi­nal stage of the ICC Men’s Twen­ty20 World Cup af­ter a de­struc­tive spell from leg-spin­ner Adam Zam­pa spurred them to a record nine-wick­et win against Namib­ia on Tues­day in An­tigua.

The 32-year-old bagged four for 12 from his al­lot­ted four overs and claimed his 100th T20 In­ter­na­tion­al wick­et, and the Aus­tralians, the reign­ing Test and One-day In­ter­na­tion­al world cham­pi­ons, bowled out the Namib­ians for 72 in 17 overs in their Group B match at the Vi­vian Richards Crick­et Ground.

Left-hand­ed open­er Travis Head then hit 34 from 17 balls and shared an un­bro­ken sec­ond-wick­et stand of 53 with his cap­tain Mitchell Marsh, not out on 18, and the Aussies fin­ished on 74 for one and reached their tar­get in on­ly 34 balls, their quick­est suc­cess­ful run chase in a T20 In­ter­na­tion­al.

Marsh brought the match to a flour­ish­ing end when he clat­tered pac­er Jack Bras­sell for a four cut through point, a six off a slow­er ball swung over deep mid-wick­et, and a four he drove fe­ro­cious­ly through mid-off while mov­ing down the pitch off suc­ces­sive balls.

The win was the third for Aus­tralia on the bounce af­ter they beat Oman by 39 runs last Wednes­day at Kens­ing­ton Oval in Bar­ba­dos, where they al­so pre­vailed over Eng­land by 36 runs this past Sat­ur­day, and they now lead Group B with six points.

The re­sult car­ried Aus­tralia above Scot­land to the top of the group, with the two sides set to meet on Sat­ur­day at the Daren Sam­my Crick­et Ground in St Lu­cia in their fi­nal group match.

A win for Scot­land – sec­ond on five points from their three match­es – will elim­i­nate de­fend­ing cham­pi­ons Eng­land, who must beat Oman and Namib­ia hand­some­ly in their re­main­ing match­es to stand any chance of pro­gress­ing to the next round.

“To get the win and qual­i­fy for the Su­per Eights, that is a nice feel­ing,” Zam­pa said. “I bowled a cou­ple of pies [in this match], but in gen­er­al, the ball feels like it is com­ing out well. I am be­ing en­cour­aged to pick up wick­ets in the mid­dle, par­tic­u­lar­ly by the cap­tain… We are hap­py, it is the first step in try­ing to take the tro­phy home, but a long way to go (still).”

The Namib­ians were al­ready reel­ing on 21 for four af­ter the Aus­tralian pac­ers – led by Josh Ha­zle­wood – had carved up the top or­der bat­ting of the African side when Zam­pa struck with his fifth ball and got Zane Green lbw for one.

Zam­pa got David Wiese caught at long-on for one in his next over, and he struck twice in his third over when he got Ruben Trumpel­mann caught at deep mid-wick­et for sev­en, and two balls lat­er, he bowled Bernard Scholtz for a duck.

Namib­ia were 43 for eight, and there was to be no come­back sto­ry with their cap­tain Ger­hard Eras­mus fin­ish­ing with the top score of 36.

“For an ICC as­so­ciate na­tion, I think these big games are al­ways gold dust in the sense that you get a phys­i­cal run out with the best in the world and you tend to face dif­fer­ent ball speeds, dif­fer­ent skills at a very high qual­i­ty, a very high con­sis­ten­cy,” Eras­mus said.

“Whether it’s a game that runs very close or one that you even lose quite far, it’s still gold dust that you need to sort of try your best to take in every mo­ment of that and every sort of ex­pe­ri­ence that you can be­cause they don’t come around of­ten.”

Mar­cus Sto­nis, open­ing the bowl­ing for the Aussies in place of in­jured left-arm fast bowler Mitchell Starc, end­ed with two for nine from three overs, and Ha­zle­wood fin­ished with two for 18 from four overs.

David Warn­er got Aus­tralia off to a blis­ter­ing start with three fours and one six in 20 off eight balls be­fore Wiese got him caught at mid-off in the sec­ond over, and Marsh joined Head to ush­er their side over the fin­ish line.

CMC

Scores:

NAMIB­IA 72 all out off 17 overs (Ger­hard Eras­mus 36; Adam Zam­pa 4-12, Mar­cus Stoi­nis 2-9, Josh Ha­zle­wood 2-18).

AUS­TRALIA 74 for one off 5.4 overs (Travis Head 34 not out, David Warn­er 20).

Aus­tralia won by nine wick­ets.

Play­er of the Match: Adam Zam­pa (Aus­tralia)