USA unable to turn strong start into win over Dutch
Published at 21 August, 2024The second meeting with the United States on Wednesday has once again resulted in a win for the Netherlands: 206-179. Although it was a team effort, Max O'Dowd, Kyle Klein and Paul van Meekeren took leading roles.
The American captain Monank Patel won the toss and asked the Netherlands to bat first. A solid start came to an end in the thirteenth over when Michael Levitt was bowled for 33 (58/1).
After that it turned out to be difficult to build meaningful partnerships. In his fiftieth One Day International, Max O'Dowd (77) was once again the anchor man. With Vikram Singh (18), 35 runs were added for the second wicket and with Noah Croes (27) another 49 for the fifth wicket. The Netherlands just didn't manage to bat the full fifty overs and was all out for 206. Seven American bowlers were all successful.
Innings USA
The Dutch were hoping for a quick breakthrough and it happened : Viv Kingma had Steven Taylor caught behind in his first over. Not much later, Kyle Klein trapped one of the other danger men, Aaron Jones, in front (39/3).
Paul van Meekeren successfully dismissed the middle order. However, breaking the partnership of Monank Patel and Shayan Jahangir turned out to be a more difficult task. They made 47 runs for the fifth wicket until Jahangir was run out.
Still, the key man was Monank Patel. When Aryan Dutt caught Patel (66) off his own bowling, the American resistance seemed broken. Kyle Klein (4-32) had to get involved to clean up the tail. His wicket-to-wicket strategy was rewarded with four LBWs. Paul van Meekeren took 3-31.
With five consecutive wins the Netherlands has taken first place from Scotland in the Cricket World Cup League 2.
