Image Source- ICC
Despite the fact that the World Cup is “only two
games in,” Colin Ackermann said, worries that the Netherlands may be overmatched
by the calibre of the competition have already surfaced following significant
losses.
Without a doubt, the Dutch have not performed poorly
at all; on the contrary, they have had their moments in both games. However,
their capacity to maintain the pressure is being scrutinised.
The Netherlands will face this issue throughout the
competition, and they are aware of it. They’ve already competed in a World Cup
Super League, losing every game they played against five of the teams they’ll
be up against at 2018 World Cup. Following those losses, they claimed that the
lessons they had learned from them had helped them in the qualification
competition, where they had defeated a Full Member (West Indies) and advanced
past two other teams (Zimbabwe and Ireland). However, now that they are at the
major dance, they realise that what they did in Harare three months ago wasn’t
enough to raise the same commotion.
“We’ve played some good cricket in patches, we
just haven’t put together enough phases where we dominate,” Ackermann,
top-scorer against New Zealand, said after the 99-run defeat. “We need to
put together all three phases of the game to win.”
First off, by opting to chase in both of their games,
they appear to be setting up their strategy incorrectly. Without the kind of
assault power that some of the teams in this competition possess, fielding
first means that they are constantly chasing the game, very literally. Even
though the opposition’s onslaught is intimidating, if given the choice to
select what to do in future games, they might want to think about choosing the
target in order to build a new form of control.
Netherlands were banking on putting New Zealand under
pressure early on, as they did with Pakistan. “Against Pakistan we took
three wickets in the powerplay and pegged them back pretty well,”
Ackermann said. “It didn’t work out that way today for us. I think we
probably were looking to follow the same blueprint.”
“Sometimes you’ve got to try and take it as deep
as possible, but then the rate keeps climbing. These bowlers do make it
difficult for us,” Ackermann said. “They’re not just going to give us
easy boundaries in the middle overs. We lost by 100 runs today but I think we
just gave them too many runs. We shouldn’t have chased 320. Maybe 280 – 290
would have been a decent chase today. We needed to set a firm base.”