NEWS
Follow UsSybrand Engelbrecht said the Netherlands played quality cricket in patches but weren’t consistent enough for a longer duration in the 2024 T20 World Cup. The Men in Orange ended their campaign with an 83-run defeat against Sri Lanka on June 16 (Sunday) and were knocked out of the competition. They end the tournament with one win and three defeats.
“It will take some time to digest, it’s a massive privilege to be on the world stage competing against the best in the world. I think we’ve tried to prepare as well as can. We really thought that if we play our brand of cricket and our style of cricket that we… a lot of learnings that we'll take from this and hopefully it'll stand us in good state going forward,” said Engelbrecht.
“I think what it boils down to is not necessarily a talent thing. I think it's just the ability of good quality teams to be good for longer. We've got patches where we are, where we play fantastic cricket, but I would put it down to their ability to be clinical for a longer period of time.
“At the 50 over World Cup as well, you can't take your foot off the gas for an over or a spell because then the game runs away from you and very similar here as well if you're not on the button bowling or batting the game just runs away from you. So, it's not a talent thing. I believe it's not necessarily just skill, but it's the ability to apply those skills for an extended period of time under high pressure.”
Coming into this encounter, the Netherlands still had a chance to qualify for the Super 8s. They needed Nepal to beat Bangladesh and then win their game against Sri Lanka by a decent margin. However, none of these two things happened. “We had some idea but we really tried to focus on our processes, especially while we were fielding.
“While we were batting, we kind of had a good idea of what the stand and the situation was in in the other game - so we did and then kind of we realized as that game progressed that the likelihood of Bangladesh winning is quite high. We just wanted to play good cricket and it just got away from us.”
Asked to bat first, Sri Lanka posted a total of 201 and then bowled the Netherlands out for just 118 in 16.4 overs. “They are obviously world-class players that's why they play all over the world in all these leagues and everything. They're fantastic cricketers. We did our analysis; we did our preparation as well as we could. And we felt that we were well prepared. And on the day, I thought they executed really well.
“A lot of credit needs to go to them and again I don't think we can fault our preparation it was maybe just execution on the day and I thought they played really well. Their batting innings, I thought they timed exceptionally well. They were calm throughout that kind of 7 to 11 - 7 to 12, made sure they hit the bad ball and then they had a strong base that they could extend at the back end.
“Then as a bowling unit I thought we got off to a decent start but we always knew they had so many bowling options and losing 2, 3, 4 wickets in quick succession always puts you massively on the back foot. A lot of credit needs to go to them, they played better cricket than us today.”
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