Cricket: Klaassen, Doram ruled out as injuries hit Dutch hopes
Malhar HathiLeft-arm quick Fred Klaassen and left-arm spinner Daniel Doram, who made his T20I debut earlier in the tri-series involving Scotland and Ireland, have been ruled out of the Netherlands’ T20 World Cup squad due to injuries.
Klaassen’s symptoms from his previous stress fracture of the lower back flared up again while Doram fractured his hand during the game against Ireland on Sunday.
“Doram was unfortunate to dive in the field, [when] his finger got stuck in the grass, it was a freak, unfortunate incident,” Ryan van Niekerk, one of the Netherlands’ assistant coaches, told Dutch News after the game.
Fast bowler Kyle Klein, who was initially set to travel as the lone reserve player, and leg-spinning all-rounder Saqib Zulfiqar have been included in the 15-man squad.
Dutch News understands Ryan Klein, Kyle’s elder brother, is on standby as a reserve.
“Our Dutch group hasn’t had Klaassen for the last year, so in terms of on-field performance, the group that we have built over the last year is incredible given the amount of talent and guys coming through the system. We are really proud of how that has grown.
“An experienced player like Fred and what he brings, not just to the bowling group but even to the team aspect, is massive for us – something that, by bringing the new guys in, we believe that anyone we pick is actually comfortable in the team space and also what we stand for and integrate into our space.”
Neither of the two injured players took the field in yesterday’s 71-run drubbing at the hands of Scotland.
Munsey’s 72 sets up Dutch loss
Scottish opener George Munsey, playing in his first game of the series, smashed a quick fire 44-ball 72, featuring four fours and six sixes to set the Dutch 159 for their second win.
After their spirited chase against Ireland, having gone down by one run earlier in the week, the Dutch crumbled to 87 all out with 31 balls left unused, a stunning turnaround from a comfortable position of 61-3.
Munsey’s innings, capitalising on too many full balls from Klein (1-43) and Bas de Leede (1-40), could easily have been cut short in the fifth over when he was on 5 off 10 balls had Michael Levitt not dropped a straightforward catch at silly mid-on. Just three balls earlier, he had taken a diving catch to see off Ollie Hairs.
Logan van Beek continued his good form with the ball with figures of 3-13 across his four overs.
Far from fluent
The batting looked far from its fluent best as Scottish bowlers hit their lengths to put the squeeze on from the first over. A top order consisting of Levitt, Vikramjit Singh (in place of Max O’Dowd) and Sybrand Engelbrecht managed just six runs between them.
Barring De Leede and Scott Edwards, who resisted with a 42-run stand, there was little support elsewhere with as many as eight batters managing single-digit scores. Left-arm spinner Mark Watt mopped up the tail accounting for the last four wickets to fall, three of them in the space of four balls.
“A day like today is a frustrating one. The idea is to be better for longer in all the facets of the game,” said Van Niekerk.
“When you look at a performance like that, it doesn’t necessarily represent what we have done and continue to do in the cricketing space, it’s a bit of an outlier. In general, our preparation has been fantastic, the team has been in a really good space. We’ll obviously try and not dig too deep into the performance considering how we played in the last two games.”
The Dutch return on Friday (11 am CEST) to take on Ireland in the final game of the tri-series, a day before their departure for Florida for the T20 World Cup.
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