Orange 'pain in the neck' of Ireland in last warm-up
Published at 15 June, 2023In the fourth and final warm-up match against Ireland, the Netherlands lost the toss and was asked to field first. Ecellent bowling and fielding limited the Irish to 193 all out. Thanks in particular to two good partnerships and a monumental 90 from Wesley Barresi, the Netherlands surpassed that.
Ireland, which has Test status since 2017, were previously treated to 312 runs from the United States (Jones 89, Patel 77). Still, the Irish managed to chase this mammoth score thanks to a wonderful 149 not out from Harry Tector.
However, things were different against the Dutch. Soon the first breakthrough came when Viv Kingma took the wicket of the dangerous Paul Stirling (5/1). McBrine fell victim to Logan van Beek and when Van Beek found Harry Tector's outside edge, the Irish found themselves with their backs against the wall (25/3 after ten overs).
Could the Orange bite the bullet or did the Irish recover? The experienced Dockrell was the first victim of Shariz Ahmad (59/5 after 20 overs), but Lorcan Tucker (74) and Gareth Delany (46) did put up a fight. Top scorer Tucker was eventually done by Clayton Floyd's left arm spin (189/9). Shortly after, Ireland were all out for 193. Van Beek 2-23, Dutt 2-27. Shariz (2-45) and Floyd (2-36) also had two wickets each.
Netherlands innings
The problem was not in the top order; O'Dowd (36) and Barresi made 88 for the second wicket at a pleasant pace. However, numbers 4 through 7 combined made just 17 runs. A very valuable innings from Shariz Ahmad (30) and a great one from Barresi (90) enabled the Netherlands to surpass the 193 Irish runs, even within 40 overs, albeit at the loss of eight wickets.
