Gabrielle Onguene came off the bench to score the goals that took Cameroon through to a date with destiny on Wednesday.
Cameroon will do battle with Portugal for a place at the Fifa Women’s World Cup™ after two goals from substitute Gabrielle Onguene earned a deserved victory over Thailand at Hamilton's Waikato Stadium.
In the most intriguing and evenly matched game of the four games in New Zealand thus far, Thailand began the brighter before Cameroon slowly began to take a grip on proceedings.
The best effort of the first half came when the Indomitable Lionesses' Charlene Meyong curled a right-foot shot against the face of the bar, while Jeannette Yango shot narrowly wide early in the second.
The Thais struggled to break out of their own half as the match wore on but did have one near miss on the hour-mark when captain Nipawan Panyosuk found the side-netting with a free-kick from just outside the area.
But the Cameroonians always looked the more likely to find a winner, and so it proved, with Ajara Nchout's brilliant and unselfish set-up play on the right leaving Onguene with the simplest of side-foot finishes to break the deadlock with 11 minutes remaining.
The Indomitable Lionesses' star sub then removed all doubt with a fine second just three minutes later, twisting away from her marker before drilling a low left-foot shot into the bottom-right corner.
There was drama deep into stoppage time when Cameroon goalkeeper Ange Bawou saw red for a dangerous challenge following a VAR review. But while that forced forward Tatiana Ewodo Ekogo to take over in goal, with all the Africans' substitutes having already been made, Thailand were unable to find a way past the stand-in keeper.
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This was Cameroon's first-ever win against Asian opposition. Their three previous meetings against teams from the continent had all ended in defeat.
The Indomitable Lionesses have now kept an impressive eight clean sheets in their last 13 matches.