A game that was to have been of epic proportions, it was the Dutch who ran away with an epic win.
Another night and another upset in the Cricket World Cup 2023. Just a couple of days back, we saw the Afghanistan team defeating the defending champions, England and that too by a margin of 69 runs. And now, the Proteas, who were going as one of the best ones in the tournament so far, got to taste the first defeat of their World Cup 2023 campaign by the underdogs, Netherlands.
Not even a year ago, the Netherlands knocked South Africa out of the T20 World Cup, defeating them by 13 runs. Who thought that the Proteas would go through the same at the ODI World Cup as well?
Well, the only good thing for the Proteas is that they haven’t been knocked out this time.
The Dutch have been playing an impressive brand of cricket, and that’s how they got to this stage after defeating teams like West Indies in the qualifiers.
Although they have been performing in bits and pieces, like for ten overs, they play good cricket, and then all of a sudden, their tag of being an associate team put pressure on them to play like one.
But today, they played like just a regular cricket-playing nation. Scott Edwards stepped up and delivered beautifully, staying not out until the very end, scoring 78 off just 69 deliveries and leading his team to a fighting total of 245 in 43 overs.
Paul van Meekeren, the Dutch speedster, tweeted a while ago that he was delivering Uber Eats instead of playing cricket, and today he was no less in delivering those cross-seam ones, to actually deliver the South African batters to the pavilion.
The captaincy was up to the mark as they say- a performance always enhances your captaincy, having the courage to bowl two spinners in the first ten overs, which eventually got the in-form man, Quinton De Cock.
Reolof van der Merwe, who used to play for South Africa earlier, bowled exceptionally well, dismissing Temba Bavuma and Rassie van der Dussen.
Each one of the bowlers got at least a couple of wickets except Aryan Dutt, who bowled well but could not get any breakthrough.
Even though the key performers in the batting department like, Bas De Leede, Max O’Dowd and Colin Ackermann, could not perform, the captain took responsibility, and that’s how the regular teams play; someone always steps up.
It seems like their paper notes have worked remarkably, which shows that they did the homework before coming into this game and stuck to their plans.
And when it came to execution, they were on point in dismissing each of the Proteas batters.
Just when the Proteas started to look like the favourites of the tournament, having won against the mighty Aussies and breaking world records, they fell short against the Dutch team.
The Dutch are known to upset the biggest teams, and within a year they have delivered three upsets, two against South Africa and one against the West Indies.
The Dutchmen would hope to deliver some more upsets in this tournament, while Temba’s Africa will be looking to regroup and assess the wrong areas to rectify in the coming games.
This loss against the Netherlands will actually prepare them for the later stage of the tournament, and hopefully, they can conquer AB De Villiers and other Proteas players and admirers’ dream of lifting the World Cup trophy.
-image from Aaj Tak website
