Namibia batter Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton scores fastest T20I hundred

Namibia batter Jan Nicol Loftie-Eaton has scored the fastest T20I hundred, off just 33 balls, going past Nepal batter Kushal Malla's record of 34 balls. Loftie-Eaton reached the milestone on Tuesday (Feb 27) against Nepal in the ongoing tri-nation series which also involves Netherlands. Loftie-Eaton scored 101 off 36 balls in total, hitting 11 fours and eight sixes as well. His 92 runs in boundaries are also the most for any batter in an individual T20I innings.

Apart from Loftie-Eaton and Malla, the next three batters on the list of players to score fastest T20I hundreds are South Africa's David Miller, India's Rohit Sharma and Czech Republic's Sudesh Wickramasekara. All these batters have a T20I hundred off just 35 balls.

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Malla, whose record Loftie-Eaton broke, had raced to the fastest hundred of all time in 2023 Asian Games when Nepal had amassed 314/3 in 20 overs against Mongolia. It was the same match where Malla's teammate Dipendra Singh Airee had hit the fastest T20I fifty off just nine balls.

As for the Namibia-Nepal match, Loftie-Eaton's hundred propelled his team to 206/4 in 20 overs while Nepal could manage only 186, losing the game by 20 runs.

For Namibia, Malan Kruger had also scored 59 off 48 balls apart from Loftie-Eaton, who had entered the crease in the 11th over only with his team at 62/3. For Nepal, Rohit Paudel took 2/30 while Abinash Bohara and Karan KC picked one wicket each.

Nepal's chase began horribly as Kushal Bhurtel got out for a golden duck. Nepal soon were 20/2 before skipper Paudel (42) and Malla (32) added 57 runs for the third wicket. Apart from them, only Airee made a meaningful contribution of 48 runs as Nepal ran out of gas.

For Namibia, Ruben Trumpelmann took 4/29 while Bernard Scholtz, Jan Frylinck and Loftie-Eaton picked two each.