The enduring charm of Netherlands cricket
It's 50 years since cricket's mainland European outpost first beat a Test side ? they're still a wonderful oddity after all these years
John Ashdown
Wednesday 26 March 2014 10.45 GMT
August 1989. A decade of English cricket that began with the bang of Botham, Headingley and all that is ending with a painful whimper. With the Ashes lost (not to be seen again for 16 years) and England 4-0 down having plumbed new depths of humilation in the fifth Test at Trent Bridge, an XI of bright young things are despatched to Amsterdam to face the Netherlands and stake a claim for a spot in the side for the final Ashes Test at The Oval.
In keeping with pretty much everything else that summer, it did not go well. "And so yesterday it finally happened: the worst really did come to the worst," wrote Matthew Engel in these pages. "The England cricket team lost by three runs to Holland. I repeat, Holland."
The fact that the team contained none of the Test side barely put a dent in the humiliation. "That was what made it so awful," continued Engel. "These were the golden boys. This team ? comprised precisely those youngsters whom everyone is imploring Ted Dexter to pick in place of the whipped and sour cream of English cricket. Now their reputation is in ruins as well."
Those reputations recovered ? Derek Pringle, John Stephenson and David Capel all well enough to make the XI for The Oval, while Nasser Hussain and Alec Stewart went on to captain England in the 90s ? but the Netherlands' knack for making headlines has not dissipated in the 25 years since, as their exploits at the current World T20 have shown. Consistency has never exactly been a watchword of Dutch cricket. Their first win over a Test playing nation ? a remarkable victory over Australia in 1964 ? was followed up a year later by defeat against the touring Midland counties club, the Free Foresters; 1994 saw them thrash a strong South Africa side by nine wickets ? and lose to Denmark and "Young Kenya". That volatile combination of eye-opening results, surprise brilliance and utter incompetence reached what must surely be its apotheosis in Bangladesh over the past week or so.
It began ignominiously last Monday, with the ousted Tim Gruijters making accusations of cheating and bullying at the management team who manouvered Tom Cooper into the squad at Gruijters's expense. The ICC, though, was satisfied the team "acted within the rules", a phrase beloved of administrators who know a hospital pass when they see it.
On the field, though, the Netherlands swiftly set about restoring their lovable, cuddly image ? a catnip-addled moggy chasing a ball of string that somehow eventually emerges panting and fur-frazzled from behind the settee having knitted a rather charming sweater. Then tears the sweater to shreds and goes to sleep next to the radiator.
It began sedately enough with a reasonably routine six-wicket win over the UAE. Then there was final-over drama against Zimbabwe, who needed a single from the final three balls and managed to smash six off the last having played out a dot and lost a wicket from the previous two.
That, though, was just an hor d'oeuvre. The main course was yet to come (as was a rather unpalatable pudding). In their final first-round game, run-rate equations meant that they needed to knock off 190 runs in 14.4 overs against Ireland to reach the Super 10 stage at the expense of Zimbabwe. What followed was, without hyperbole, one of the most extraordinary displays of hitting ever seen in international cricket ? 19 sixes, 12 fours, 193 in 13.5 overs. If the team had maintained their scoring rate over 20 overs they would have reached 279.
That rousing triumph was followed by unmitigated disaster. Put in by Sri Lanka the Dutch were not just skittled but obliterated for 39, the lowest score in a Twenty20 international and the second-lowest in any professional T20 match. The Sri Lankans knocked off the runs with 90 of the 120 balls remaining ? the shortest ever T20 run chase.
So intrigue and accusations, disaster and triumph, and disaster again. And the tournament is barely past its halfway point. There's just something about the Netherlands cricket team, something beyond those results and a natural inclination to root for the underdog. Perhaps it's because the Dutch team are such a geographical and statistical outlier. In the ICC's most recent update of the global ODI world rankings (published in August 2013) the Netherlands sat 12th (a spot they have since lost to Afghanistan). That made them essentially Europe's No3, behind England and Ireland and narrowly ahead of Scotland. Europe's fifth-best international cricket team rankings-wise is (just behind Oman and Bermuda at No26 in the world standings) Italy. Then comes Denmark (at No28 in the world) and, after Guernsey and Jersey in the 30s, next from mainland Europe is Germany at No42, behind such cricketing powerhouses as Vanuatu, Argentina and Fiji.
Outside Great Britain and Ireland, Europe doesn't really do cricket, at the elite level at least. Even in that other major British sporting export that has rather minor standing in the rest of the continent ? rugby union ? cooking the books by taking France out of the equation, still leaves Italy with Georgia, Romania, Russia, Spain and Portugal for company in the IRB's top 25. Rankings-wise British tennis might be the most obvious comparison (with Andy Murray in the Oranje role).
It means the Dutch cricket team are an oddity and everyone loves an oddity, especially one as prone to brief orgies of magnificence as it is to grand displays of ineptitude. The best news? Games against South Africa, New Zealand and, ominously enough, England are still to come.
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2014/mar/26/the-spin-enduring-charm-netherlands-cricket
