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NED vs IRE: Stephan Myburgh, bowlers shine as the Netherlands win historic series against Ireland

It was a historic day in the history of Dutch cricket as the Netherlands defeated an ICC full member and Test status holder Ireland in the third ODI at Utrecht by six wickets, to not only win their first-ever ODI series against a full member but also earn crucial 10 points for the ICC Cricket World Cup Super League. 

Stephan Myburgh, the Dutch opener was the hero of the game, who stood in all adversities and anchored the innings and the Netherlands’ tricky chase of 164. The left-handed batter made a composed 74 off 111 deliveries in an innings which included six fours and three huge sixes. 

It was in an attempt to go anti to what his inning had been till then, Mybugh missed a straight ball trying to slog-sweep the winning six. The scorecard read 158, only six runs away from the victory. It was Myburgh’s best-ever performance with the bat in ODI cricket, surpassing his previous best of 60 that came against Kenya in 2011 in The Hague. 

However, his wicket triggered a mini-collapse as in the span of the next four runs the orange brigade lost two more wickets that included their skipper Pieter Seelaar and Myburgh’s partner during the much needed 62 run partnership for the fifth wicket, Bas de Leede. de Leede got out for 66 balls 18 while Seelaar was removed for four runs. It took Logan Van Beek, who was also the key component with the ball earlier in the day, to hit the winning four. 

Andrew Balbirnie, the Irish captain won his first toss on the tour in the morning today and decided to bat first. His decision was not supported by the batsmen as the Netherlands struck thrice in the first 10 overs removing the heart and soul of the Irish batting with wickets of Paul Stirling, Kevin O’Brien and of the skipper Balbirnie himself. Vivian Kingma, who was playing his first game of the series was the chief destructor alongside Fred Klaassen. 

George Dockrell united with Harry Tector to steady the sheep and they did with their 89 runs stand for the fifth wicket, which came off 138 balls. But just when they thought of accelerating the run rate, van Beek struck twice in the span of 23 balls to remove both Dockrell and Tector. 

Post these two wickets, Simi Singh tried as much as he could but wasn’t really able to resurrect the men in green’s innings which ended at 163 in the 49th over. Tector was the top scorer with 58 off 100 balls. For the Netherlands, both Klaassen and van Beek took three wickets apiece while Timm van der Gugten took two wickets.

While the 30-year-old van Beek was chosen Man of the Series for his all-around show with 55 runs and six wickets in the series, Myburgh was named Man of the Match. With this win, Netherlands have gained 20 points from three games and have reached the ninth position in the CWC Super League ahead of countries like South Africa, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Ireland.

The CWC Super League acts as the qualifying tournament for the 2023 World Cup in India as the top seven nations in its standing plus hosts India would qualify directly for the World Cup, while the remaining five times would undergo a qualifying tournament to decide the last two teams for the 10 team show pice ODI event.

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UK PM Boris Johnson, Ravichandran Ashwin come in support of Ollie Robinson after ECB suspension

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WTC final | ICC stays 200-run follow-on rule, allows players to seek clarification before DRS call

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