Ahmedabad: In a first innings of fluctuating emotions in front of a 68,510-strong home crowd that had assembled in anticipation of batting fireworks, Netherlands bottled up India’s batting aggression for as long as they could. Towards the latter half of the innings though, India’s power-hitting, on this occasion led by Shivam Dube (66 – 31b,4×4,6×6) exposed the difference in the depth between the two sides.
Dube and Hardik Pandya’s (30 – 21b, 3×6) big-hitting propelled India to 193/6. In reply, Netherlands fell comfortably short by 17 runs. They had no answers to Varun Chakravarthy’s (3-0-14-3) guile. The defending champions will head to the Super 8 with an all-win record. Challenged on occasions, but mostly unscathed.
Netherlands can still be proud of how well they bowled and fielded for two-thirds of their bowling innings.
Another zero for Abhishek
Two left-handed openers, an off-spinner to face – par for the course at the start of proceedings. That’s all it took Netherlands to see the back of Abhishek Sharma. When Aryan Dutt went through Abhishek’s defences, it marked a third duck in a row for the young man who was supposed to set the league stage alight.
Netherlands put up a brave performance on their way out. Tight lines by the off-spinners and pace off holding lengths by medium-pacers led to Indian batters struggling on a black-soil pitch to break free at the start. Ishan Kishan began brightly, but this wasn’t to be his day as he dragged one on to the stumps on 18 (7b).
The 9th over was all drama. With the scoring rate stuck at 7-an-over and pressure building up, the home crowd was getting increasingly anxious. They all went quiet when Suryakumar Yadav’s innings was almost curtailed on 13, but his catch was grassed at deep square leg off Logan van Beek’s medium pace. A release boundary by Surya later, Tilak Varma’s (31 – 27b) scrap at the other end would come to a close as he failed to slice one over long off. That eventful over later India were 69/3. Three more quiet overs followed.
Surya tried to create all the angles around the crease he could to deliver some blows behind the wicket, but the Dutch bowlers can feel proud of how they were able to chain the India skipper. A 28-ball 34 with limited damage of two fours and a six meant there would be no rescue act from Surya this time like against USA.
Dube goes big
But Netherlands were dealing with a batting contingent that was so abundant and deep that they would almost always have someone to help navigate choppy waters. To Dube’s credit, he waited it out when the going was tough. In his early minutes at the crease, he almost top-edged to a fielder to a pace-off delivery like against USA. When the CSK power-hitter looks ungainly at the crease, a thought crosses the mind that Axar Patel – he was rested for Washington Sundar – would potentially be a better floater for the more testing battles ahead.
But with Dube, with his broad shoulders one ball in his arc and sometimes it’s all it takes for him to get his bat swing going. Dube had rehearsed exactly for this kind of role in a bilateral match in Visakhapatnam against New Zealand in the lead up to the World Cup. In the 16th over, Dube combined with Hardik to get stuck into Roelof van der Merwe with two sixes. In the next over, Dube used his long levers to great effect against van Beek for a 20-run over. Dube was celebrating a combative 50 in just 25 balls, having raised the tempo from 26 off 19 balls.
After that, the wheels came off the bowling unit with Hardik striking two trademark straight sixes in the 19th over, a pull over long on, and a sliced six over long off after spotting the slower ball early – 75 runs came off the last five overs to take India to 193.
In response, Netherlands had barely survived the pace burst from Arshdeep Singh and Jasprit Bumrah that Varun’s mystery proved too confounding.
Varun’s overs can prove the most testing if you are unable to pick him. That became evident as they went about countering him with either ultra caution or wild swipes. Varun got the first breakthrough after beating Max O’Dowd (20) with a googly. Colin Ackermann and Aryan Dutt – both had bowled some effective overs – had little clue and went out slogging to hand Varun wickets off consecutive balls.
From going nowhere in terms of scoring rate at 35/1 after the Powerplay, Netherlands’ innings derailed to 112/5 after 13. Some late hitting narrowed the margin of defeat as Surya experimented with his bowling options at the end, but the result was never in doubt.
