The young net bowlers at the Ekana Stadium in Lucknow were pretty charged up while bowling The Netherlands batters. Scott Edwards walked into the centre net with Collin Ackerman to his right and Teja Nidamanuru to the left. The Dutch captain sweated it out for almost an hour with Paul Van Meekeren and Logan van Beek bowling to him in tandem. While the rest two had quite a session with the young guns all of them bowling full tilt, once the batters were done, the tail-enders padded up to wrap up the session.
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Coach Ryan Cook had his eyes on the session and he did not miss to appreciate the efforts shown by the local lads who aided the Dutch for four hours straight. A fist bump from Bas de Leede kept them motivated before they all vacated the practice arena. Such is the environment in The Netherlands camp right now.
All smiles, enjoying every bit of their India trip and most importantly, focusing on their goal – the semi-finals. They caused one of the biggest upsets in the World Cup up in Dharamsala earlier this week, beating South Africa by 38 runs, but it seemed like they have absorbed every bit of it, moved on and are now focused on their next challenge – Sri Lanka.
Earlier in June, The Netherlands faced the Lankans twice and found themselves at the receiving end on both occasions. But, coming into the contest, the scenarios have changed completely. The Dutch have become one of the interesting sides in the contest while Lanka is badly battered and bruised – with zero points in the kitty.
Addressing the pre-match presser, Nidmanuru recalled their losses to the Asian Lions in the qualifiers, stating that the team has learnt its lesson and has worked on them.
“Look I think If we assess those two games that we played against Sri Lanka, it’s our batting department that probably didn’t live up to the expectation that we needed to. I think in the final we played, we kept them down to a good score, we could have chased that, but obviously, their spin through the middle was something that troubled us,” Nidamanuru told the media.
“The likes of Hasaranga, for example, and Theekshana have bowled really well against most batters in the world, but in those conditions where the ball was turning a little bit off the straight and it was tricky, but that’s something that we’ve looked into and we’ve addressed and we’ve worked extremely hard on playing spin and being able to rotate strike through the middle a little bit better,” he added.
Coming to India, the Netherlands’ preparation has majorly been dependent on net bowlers. They roped in four left-arm net bowlers, via a social media advertisement, who aided them for 9 days before getting into the tournament. The same was the case in Lucknow where they were assisted by plenty of local net bowlers.
There’s a big difference between training with the net bowlers and then facing quality attacks in the game. But Nidamanuru believes it all in the mind. The Dutchmen have done enough match simulations to prepare themselves for every challenge.
Replying to a Cricketnext query, “We try to replicate match scenario situations as much as possible. Actually, during that camp in Alur, we had a couple of side-armers from the Sunrisers Hyderabad there as well. So, they were extremely fast, one was a left-armer and one was a right. So, we try to top up or we try to bridge the gap in different ways obviously. Let’s look at it this way.
“Obviously quality training that is purposeful is always useful, whether that’s a little bit slower or whether that’s whatever the case may be. When you get out into the middle, there’s a match-day intensity, you move quicker, you adjust to different things. Obviously, you are problem-solving on the go. That’s also part of being a professional cricketer.
“It’s just about being able to mentally manage those things as best as possible, whether we have that or we don’t have that. And that’s something we try to pride ourselves on and that goes into the off-the-field preparation and our open-mindedness regarding how we work,” he added.
The calm before the storm
Nidamanuru said everybody is ‘calm’ in the dressing room, despite thumping the Proteas in what an unexpected turn of events. The Netherlands have
“The mood in the camp is, I think the word that I would like to use is calm. Obviously, we were excited after the game and we celebrated it and we sat around and had a good conversation about the game.
“But we’ve come to the World Cup with a goal in our mind and I think our focus sort of quickly shifted to, okay, well, what’s next and can we prepare? So, we travelled, we trained, we trained yesterday, we trained today and obviously we’re ready to go for tomorrow morning. The mood is calm and quite a few of the guys are very determined because we lost twice to them at the qualifiers, and it’s something that we want to put right for ourselves within our group,” Nidamanuru said.
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