Netherlands beat Nepal by 7 wickets in World Cup qualifiers, secure Super Six spot

Netherlands produced an all-round performance to beat Nepal by seven wickets and qualify for the Super Sixes of the ICC Men’s Cricket World Cup Qualifier 2023, here on Saturday. Max O’Dowd’s brilliant 90 off 75 balls helped the Netherlands chase down the target of 168 in just 27.1 overs as their bowlers bundled out Nepal for 167. With this defeat, Nepal’s World Cup qualification hopes are over.

Max O’Dowd was in scintillating form during the Netherlands’ massive win over Nepal.

he is @ramco #POTM for his 75-ball 90#cwc23 , #NEDvNEP pic.twitter.com/8oCflgaTiC– ICC (@ICC) 24 June 2023

After scoring only one run in the first three overs of their chase, the Netherlands openers went further. Max O’Dowd and Vikramjit Singh put on 86 runs in the first 13 overs, but the latter fell to Sandeep Lamichhane (2/60). While Vikramjit (30) had three fours and a six to his name, O’Dowd was even more aggressive, hitting four fours and a six during their partnership. He completed his half-century in just 30 balls.

With this blazing start, the Dutch team managed to score 97 runs in the first 15 overs. Despite losing Wesley Baresi in the 15th over, the batting side looked in complete control of the target.

With Bas de Leede, O’Dowd added 62 runs for the third wicket to propel the Dutch closer to the finishing line. Unfortunately, O’Dowd was bowled by Gulsan Jha in the 27th over and he was not present when his team finished the game.

Nepal’s innings never got going as the Dutch bowlers struck regularly and restricted the sub-continental team to a low total.

Nepal’s batsmen had to struggle against high quality new ball spells from Logan van Beek and Ryan Klein. Both moved the ball on several occasions and struck with the bat. Nepal were 23 for the loss of the wicket of Asif Sheikh at the end of the first powerplay.

This conservative start was followed by a dreadful collapse as Nepal lost three batsmen in the space of 21 balls. Two of these wickets were taken by Vikramjeet Singh, who continued to trouble Nepal’s batsmen with his uneven bounce. After this Rohit Paudel and Kushal Malla tried to handle the innings.

It did not last long and Malla fell to Aryan Dutt in the 26th over. The ball slid down the ground between the long-off and long-on regions, where despite confusion between Teja Ndamanaru and Max O’Dowd, the former successfully took the catch. Thereafter, Paudel tried to bring some initiative into Nepal’s innings by hitting a few boundaries to increase the scoring rate.

But Van Beek dismissed both Paudel and Dipendra Singh Airey to leave Nepal at 123 for seven. Sandeep Lamichhane (27) flung his bat in the next few overs to add some quick runs, but the Asian team could not bat even in their allotted overs.

Brief scores: Nepal 167 (Poudel 33, Van Beek 4-24, Vikramjeet 2-20) beat Netherlands 168 for 3 (O’Dowd 90, De Leede 41 not out, Lamichhane 2-60) by seven wickets.