U18 finishes valuable tour of Cape Town with loss to Rondebosch High School
Published at 05 March, 2023The last game of the the pre-season tour to South Africa of the Dutch Lions U18 was against the renowned Rondebosch School. The opposition was too strong for the young men in orange: they lost by 92 runs.
For the third time this week The Netherlands were asked to bowl first and the start was really good, with three early wickets. The recovery of Rondebosch however was equally impressive, with batter 4 and 5 scoring 73 and 69 respectively. This resulted in a challenging target of 235 runs to be made in 40 overs. On the Dutch side, Udit Nashier was the pick of the bowlers with 17 runs in 5 overs whilst taking one wicket.
The young men from Holland came out of the innings break in poor fashion, with three early wickets. They fell in similar fashion: all three caught behind. Unfortunately, the rest of the team could not make up for this slow start. Only Martijn Scholte showed some good aggressive batting, finishing on 43 not out after 37.5 overs, when he had no partners left.
All in all, the boys will travel back to The Netherlands with a lot of lessons learned. A lot of hard work will have to be put in to be competitive in August, when the World Cup Qualification will be played (at VOC, Excelsior'20, and VCC) against Scotland, Jersey, Guernsey, Italy and Norway. The trip has been invaluable in terms of acting as an early warning and reality check, the opportunity to play under different circumstances, and growing as a team. If the squad can translate that in appropriate follow-up, something may be expected from this relatively young side.
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