The Netherlands are not here to have fun, enjoy, gain experience by playing against the big boys and go home. They want to beat the top teams and also harbour a dream of advancing to the semi-finals of World Cup 2023. If anybody thought otherwise, the Dutch performance against South Africa at the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala on Tuesday is likely to erase that. The Netherlands beat South Africa by 38 runs on a pitch that was in favour of the South African pacers, especially after rain sprinkled more life into it. The reduced match - 43 overs per side - might have ever-slightly favoured the Dutch as any form of shortened game generally favours the weaker side but Scott Edwards and his men showed they are not a flash in the pan.
"I suppose we go into every game with our plans and our ways that we're going to try and win the game. For us, it's just about playing our best brand of cricket and we feel like if we play well enough on the day, we can beat any side," said Edwards in the post-match press conference.
The Netherlands have qualified for the World Cup the hard way. They are the only associate member playing in this tournament and it was possible because they got the better of Ireland, Zimbabwe and West Indies in the qualifiers.
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"I think after qualifying we were pretty quick to set our minds on what we wanted to do at this tournament. Yeah, and we weren't coming here just to have fun and enjoy it. We're here to win games of cricket and give ourselves the best chance to make that next stage. So, yeah, South Africa is obviously a very strong side and they'll be close to that semi-final spot. So, yeah, if we want to be amongst it, we've got to beat sides like this," Edwards said.
{{/usCountry}}"I think after qualifying we were pretty quick to set our minds on what we wanted to do at this tournament. Yeah, and we weren't coming here just to have fun and enjoy it. We're here to win games of cricket and give ourselves the best chance to make that next stage. So, yeah, South Africa is obviously a very strong side and they'll be close to that semi-final spot. So, yeah, if we want to be amongst it, we've got to beat sides like this," Edwards said.
{{/usCountry}}The Dutch were reeling at 140 for seven in the 34th over before Edwards himself engineered a remarkable recovery with an unbeaten 78 off 69 balls to take his side to a fighting 245 for eight. They then shot South Africa out for 207 in 42.5 overs.
Asked what transpired between him and other batters when they were looking down the barrel, Edwards said, "As a group we pride ourselves on playing total cricket which is guys that are coming in at number 8, 9, 10 have just as much of the ability to put on those partnerships."But out there batting with them, it was just about giving ourselves a chance to go harder later in the innings. And luckily enough, Roelof (van der Merwe) and Aryan (Dutt) in there played some unbelievable cameos to get us to what we thought was probably a par score."