Netherlands bowled with clockwork accuracy and were excellent on the field to script their second upset of the World Cup. After South Africa, the men in orange surprised Bangladesh with an all-round bowling performance here on Saturday where fast bowler Paul van Meekeren (3/23) was the first among equals.
The idea was to be relentless with line and length and use the cross-seam, Van Meekeren told the official broadcaster after Saturday’s win. There couldn’t have been a better summation of a bowling effort that suffocated Bangladesh.
Given where they were at the beginning, in the middle and when approaching the end, 229 all out looked like a speck in the distance on soupy-lit afternoon. Netherlands rode luck, especially captain Scott Edwards who top-scored with 68 (89b, 6x4), and powerful hitting from Logan van Beek to set a target that was 87 more than Bangladesh, all out for 142, managed.
Not often does a team lose five wickets in the last 10 overs and still manage 74. Of those, 36 came in the last three and 17 in the final over when Van Beek ripped into Mahedi Hassan. The second-last ball six matched Virat Kohli’s late effort against New Zealand for audacity.
From 4/2 to 63/4 and 194/8 after being 185/5, it was the kind of score on a sticky wicket that gave Netherlands belief. One that got a fillip when the impressive off-spinner Aryan Dutt surprised Litton Das with bounce. An early breakthrough with a wicket maiden can give a chasing team the jitters, more so when 19/1 becomes 19/2.
{{/usCountry}}From 4/2 to 63/4 and 194/8 after being 185/5, it was the kind of score on a sticky wicket that gave Netherlands belief. One that got a fillip when the impressive off-spinner Aryan Dutt surprised Litton Das with bounce. An early breakthrough with a wicket maiden can give a chasing team the jitters, more so when 19/1 becomes 19/2.
{{/usCountry}}That happened when Van Beek bounced Tanzid Hassan. Between the fifth and seventh overs, Bangladesh scored no runs. They never really got going, the effete batting prompting skipper Shakib Al Hasan to say, “this is as bad as it gets.”
And Bangladesh were poor in the field. The bowler to suffer most was Mustafizur Rahman. On a track where the ball wasn’t coming on to the bat, Rahman varied pace to outfox batters. He could have got Edwards twice on zero and again on 12 but Das and Mushfiqur Rahim couldn’t hold on to stiff chances and then a slash found its way through the slip cordon. Sybrand Engelbrecht too was dropped on 29 off Rahman. By then, Engelbrecht and Edwards, and Wesley Barresi and Colin Aclkermann before that, had ensured that Netherlands would fight not fold. You couldn’t say that for Bangladesh.