The USA camp is feeling the strain. Less than two days after squeezing past the Netherlands in Chennai, they must front up again – this time against Namibia – and several first-choice players are under the weather.
“You can see my throat also [is bad],” head coach Pubudu Dassanayake admitted soon after Sunday’s win. “The whole team is struggling basically. Everybody is struggling for the last few days. Andries was not fit to play. The last couple of days, he was throwing up and struggling with fever. Hopefully, he’ll get through.”
The coach then added, almost as an aside that said plenty: “But it’s not only him. The whole group has a few things. Like Ali [Khan], we played him today, but he’s also not 100%. Slowly, I’m hoping that things will get better for the next game.”
Andries Gous is central to those hopes. The 32-year-old has built an impressive T20 résumé – 211 CPL runs, 142 in the PSL, 524 in the ILT20 and 511 in MLC – and only eight weeks ago drilled 120 not out from 58 balls for Desert Vipers, the highest individual score in the short history of the ILT20. His power hitting and experience would ease the load on a batting unit that has had to shuffle constantly.
In his absence on Sunday, Saiteja Mukkamalla stepped in and promptly produced a composed, match-winning fifty. Dassanayake was quick to underline why the 21-year-old (22 in April) is so highly rated. “Sai is one of the best players we have,” he said. “It’s just that last game, I couldn’t play him because of the balance of the team. But he is 22 years old [will be this April]. He learned the game in the USA. He is a USA product. And we are proud to put him in the field. You saw how good he is today. He is the future of the USA cricket basically.”
Sunday’s result was the Americans’ first victory of this T20 World Cup and, according to their coach, an important signal. “I think as a team, actually from inside the group, we know how good we are,” he said. “But we just had to prove on the field and we are disappointed that we couldn’t finish the India game well.
“Unfortunately, the schedule is in such a way that we had to play the two big countries first and then come into the Associates. So today’s game, the Netherlands game basically, is a message to everyone that how far we are above the rest of the Associate countries. And this is a team that deserves to play more against Full Members.”
The lack of cricket before the tournament has not helped. An administrative freeze meant USA had gone without a T20 international since April 2025. Those on franchise deals – Gous, Shubham Ranjane and others – kept ticking over; the rest relied on a three-week camp in Sri Lanka, which yielded five matches against Sri Lanka A, one against Oman and two official warm-ups.
“We were able to play five games against Sri Lanka A and one game against Oman and then two warm-up games,” Dassanayake explained. “That’s only the leading up to this World Cup. I just want to thank ICC as well. They were behind us in the last couple of months, helping us to…”
His voice trailed off, the throat still raw. There is no time to rest it: another match, another must-win, and a squad still coughing and groaning its way through a packed schedule.
