Victory against South Africa gives cricketers an ‘incredible feeling’

“Congratulations. This is The biggest!” The feeling of excitement among millions of cricket fans in India – many of them enthusiasts, fans and sports journalists, NRCAs the reporter sent a message late Tuesday evening ‘Big regret‘: Netherlands cricket team beat South Africa in ODI World Cup By 38 runs (245-207).

“It’s an incredible feeling. This win shows that we are on the right track after a long period of hard work,” Rolof van der Merwe says by phone a day later from Lucknow, where Sri Lanka are next up on Saturday. “When you go into a tournament, there are major unknowns. Now we know how things will turn out if we execute our plans on the field.

The match against South Africa has been tough for Dutch cricketers for a long time. Captain Scott Edwards was dismissed for 78 runs and van der Merwe for 29 runs. After that he bowled some important innings and dismissed two opponents. Van der Merwe is very satisfied with his individual performance, he admits, but ultimately the whole team contributed to the world number three’s victory. Befitting South African national coach Ryan Cook’s philosophy of the game, who talks about ‘all-round cricket’, the ambition is to progress to the semi-finals.

Indian approval

All ten World Cup participants will play each other once, after which the top four nations will compete for the world title. The performance of the Netherlands in the first two matches received encouraging recognition from the Indian players watchers Although they lost against Pakistan and New Zealand, the tally. The Dutch are the absolute underdogs of the tournament. All other national teams are invited Tests Tournaments lasting a maximum of five match days to be played. Netherlands play only short formats One Day International In the World Cup. The Netherlands qualified for the tournament last summer At the expense of Scotland and the West Indies.

Last year, the Netherlands won the Twenty20 World Cup in Australia against South Africa in a narrow variation of 20 overs per team (six balls in an over). In this World Cup, there are 50-over matches and “you can continue to play good cricket for a long time.” Van der Merwe: “That’s the challenge, but we showed on Tuesday that it applies to us as a team. We played one-day cricket the way we want to play it and we can take that as a blueprint for the rest of the tournament.”

Last year, South Africa might have taken the Netherlands too lightly, says the 38-year-old professional, but it would have been different for the match at the Himalayan Stadium in Dharamsala. “We again played excellent cricket. The game is decided on the day itself,” says van der Merwe.

For himself, the opponent brought no added pressure: Rolof Erasmus van der Merwe, born in Johannesburg, played for the South African team between 2009 and 2011. He applied for a Dutch passport in 2015 – his mother is Dutch – and moved.

Van der Merwe is not the only Dutch player with such a background: Colin Ackerman and Ryan Klein are from South Africa and chose the Netherlands so they could play for a national team. Van der Merwe sees the ‘foreign team’, as the Dutch team is referred to by the Indian media, as the team’s strength. “We all bring different backgrounds. But at the end of the day we are playing for Holland and we want to win.

Olympic Games

Wrote that Netherlands gave Indian cricket fans one of the best matches in the World Cup Hindustan Times. But the real craziness you’d expect from a cricket event in cricket-mad India has yet to materialize. Well, there was one more Other stunts, Afghanistan team won by defeating the defending champions England. And last weekend there was a much awaited match between India and Pakistan. The rivals played against each other on Indian soil for the first time in seven years in front of over 130,000 spectators. Political infighting and mistrust between neighboring countries have long made this difficult.

The World Cup in India provided the perfect backdrop for important sports news this week. The International Olympic Committee announced at its annual meeting in Mumbai of all places that cricket will return to the Summer Games in 2028 for the first time since 1900. “It’s a milestone for every game,” says van der Merwe. “A lot of people have the Olympic dream and they can now consider cricket as a sport. It can happen in the Netherlands too.

But first Van der Merwe thinks the Dutch team needs to drum up interest in the game in their own country. “Before you know it, the semi-finals are really within reach.”