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Netherlands effectively knocked Bangladesh out of World Cup 2023's semifinal race after their emphatic 87-run win over Shakib-Al-Hasan at the iconic Eden Gardens stadium in Kolkata on October 28, Saturday.
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Batting first Netherlands rode on skipper Scott Edwards' impressive half century to post a modest total of 229. But Bangladesh didn't have a clue that Dutch will return to haunt them as Paul Van Meekeren ran through the Tigers' batting line-up and reduced them to a paltry 142 in 42.2 overs. Mehidy Hasan remained the top scorer for Bangladesh with 35 off 40. This was the second instance in the ongoing ODI World Cup, when Netherlands caused an upset as earlier they rocked the high-flying South Africa by 38 runs on October 17.
Meanwhile, Bangladesh skipper Shakib Al Hasan was left clueless after Bangladesh horrendous campaign. Following Bangladesh's loss Shakib ended up venting out at his team in the post-match presentation and said he doesn't know what's going on in their players' minds.
"I thought we bowled really well but we were sloppy in the field. We should have restricted them to 160-170 from the position we were in. But we have been poor with the bat all tournament and this is as bad as it gets. There is more cricket to come and we have to pick up ourselves and I know it's hard but we have to try to finish the tournament on a high. Throughout the tournament we have been struggling, I don't know what's on the players' minds," Shakib said.
It was Paul van Meekeren who tilted the match in Netherlands' favour with his cracking spell of 4/23.
After being adjudged the Player of the match Meekeren said," Pretty special day. We’ve said earlier we want to go till the semis, and for that we need to win games. Very happy with the way we bounced back against Australia. At the halfway stage, 230-240 would have been par we reckoned. Aryan Dutt and van Beek kept things tight in the powerplay. We’ve been working on our fielding, every training session we do 20 minutes of fielding drills. It was an all round performance, pretty tough to pick a Man of the Match. Scott Edwards and Sybrand Engelbrecht got a bit of momentum for us by building that partnership. Pure team performance tonight."
This was the the first time Netherlands won two matches in the same World Cup, thanks to their aggressive and disciplined bowling effort.
Dutch skipper Scott Edwards said his bowlers had put in a superb effort.
“I think it was easy to be fair. We only had two days off. We were straight into travelling and into our plans. We were saying if we could get 220 plus, we were in the game. The bottom order guys got us to a very competitive total. The bowlers have been awesome. Aryan, Colin, Bas everyone. We have been superb on the field. Bit of everything. The system is getting more professional in Netherlands. We train incredibly hard. We always spoke at the start of the tournament that we aim for the semis. That remains our goal but we have a few tough games coming up,” said Netherlands' skipper.
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