Scotland skipper Scott Edwards played the perfect captain’s knock as he rescued them from 82/5 to help them post a challenging total of 245/8 against South Africa in a rain-curtailed 43 overs per side game at Himachal Pradesh Cricket Association Stadium, Dharamsala on October 17. Edwards’s unbeaten 78 is the second-highest score by a wicketkeeper-batter against South Africa in ODI World Cup history. He missed Australia's Alex Carey's record of 85 from the previous edition of the World Cup.
So far, only seven wicketkeeper-batters have scored a half-century against South Africa in ODI World Cups. Others on the list are Bangladesh's Mushfiqur Rahim (78 in 2019), England's Alec Stewart (77 in 1992), Sri Lanka's Kusal Mendis (76 in 2023), Pakistan's Moin Khan (63 in 1999), and UAE's Swapnil Patil (57 in 2015). The list is missing the names of great Asian wicketkeepers Kumar Sangakkara and Mahendra Singh Dhoni.
Also, Edwards' unbeaten 78 is the 10th-highest score by a captain wicketkeeper-batter in World Cup 2023. Zimbabwe's Brendan Taylor holds the record with 138 against India in 2015.
It is also the third-highest score by a Netherlands captain in ODIs. Earlier this year, Edwards had scored 83 against Zimbabwe in World Cup qualifiers. Peter Borren holds the record with an 84-run knock against Ireland in Kolkata in 2011.
Edwards' 69-ball 78 featured 10 fours and a six. He shared crucial partnerships with Reolof van der Merwe and Aryan Dutt who pushed the score with valuable cameos in slog overs.
After losing the seventh wicket, the Netherlands added 105 runs from 55 balls and lost just one wicket. It is their second-highest tally of runs after losing seven wickets against a full-member nation (Test-playing side).
Edwards and Van der Merwe shared a 64-run partnership for the eighth wicket from just 36 deliveries. It is the third instance of an eighth-wicket partnership of fifty-plus runs at more than 10 runs per over in ODI World Cup history.
This was Edwards' 14th half-century from 38 ODI innings. He equalled the record for most fifty-plus scores by a Dutch batter in the format. Former Netherlands skipper Ryan ten Doeschate has 14 fifty-plus ODI scores from 32 innings.
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