Ackerman: The Netherlands “needs to put together the three stages” - Gudstory

Rate this post

[ad_1]

There are only two matches remaining until the World Cup finals, as Colin Ackerman pointed out, but fears that the Netherlands may overshadow the quality of the opposition in this tournament are already beginning to emerge after the heavy defeats.

Make no mistake, the Dutch were in no way disgraced – far from it – and they had their moments in both matches. But their ability to keep up the pressure is under the spotlight.

“We played some good cricket in spells, and we didn’t put together enough phases in which we dominated,” Ackerman, the top scorer in the match against New Zealand, said after the 99-run defeat. “We need to put together all three phases of the game to win.”

This will be the challenge facing the Netherlands throughout this tournament, and they know it. They have already been through the World Cup Super League, playing a series against five of the teams they will face in this World Cup, losing all of them. In the aftermath, they said the lessons learned from those defeats helped them in the qualifying tournament, where they beat a full member (West Indies) and qualified ahead of two others (Zimbabwe and Ireland). But now that they had attended the big party, they could see that it would take more than they did in Harare three months ago to cause similar unrest.

At first, they appear to be setting up their game incorrectly in choosing to chase in both games. Playing first, without the attacking firepower that some teams have in this tournament, means they are chasing the game – literally – all the time. If they have the opportunity to decide what to do in future matches, they may want to consider setting the target, even if the opponent’s attack is scary, in order to establish a different kind of control.

But in this match, the Netherlands were counting on putting New Zealand under pressure early, as they did with Pakistan. “Against Pakistan, we took three wickets in a power play and strung them together well,” Ackermann said. “It didn’t work out that way for us today. I think we might have been looking to follow the same blueprint.”

Even in the Pakistan game, it worked only briefly. Netherlands had Pakistan 38 for 3 inside the first 10 overs before a 120-run partnership between Mohammad Rizwan and Saud Shakeel put the lower order on the platform. Against New Zealand, it took 12.1 overs before the Dutch got their first wicket and then allowed New Zealand to score over six runs throughout the middle period.

The Netherlands missed out on Logan van Beek’s efforts, especially since Ryan Clyne does not have the same pace, and stuck to their tactic of opening with a spinning kick, something only Afghanistan has done in this tournament. Again, it looked like a deliberate tactic as bowling first, and Ackermann confirmed that. “Aryan Dutt is a huge threat with a new ball on this wicket,” he said. “He is a big threat to left-handers up front. We saw today he got three in the first three overs. It’s all about match-ups for us.”

“Matches” and “scheme” are the kind of tactical buzzwords you hear on commentary and analysis shows and sometimes in team meetings, but through the noise other teams are making, they also talk about adaptability and flexibility and that vocabulary wasn’t there in Ackermann’s press conference yet. the match. Maybe he wasn’t asked about it. But for the sake of argument, if the Netherlands aren’t thinking a little outside the box, now is a good time to start, because the big teams will keep coming, and they will have to find ways to compete more evenly with them.

It’s still too early to make too many conclusions about how the Netherlands will fare in this tournament, and the common trope is that they are bound to upset someone, but to do that small improvements are needed quickly. In their quest for big results, they have not yet come together properly and realize that if they face the same situation again, they can expect it to be just as difficult.

“Sometimes you have to try to take it as deep as you can, but then the rate keeps going up,” Ackerman said. “These players make it difficult for us.” “They won’t just give us easy boundaries in the middle. We lost by 100 runs today but I think we gave them a lot of runs. We shouldn’t have been chasing 320. Maybe 280-290 would have been a big difference.” “Good chase today. We needed to set a steady base.”

This suggests that improvements are needed with both bat and ball before the Netherlands’ next match, against South Africa in a week’s time.

Post Views: 72