Logan van Beek – Bulletproof Truth

Anyone for Test cricket? Depends who you ask …

“Absolutely not. Five days in the dirt with a red ball? That would be pretty tough.” – Max O’Dowd

Telford Vice / Cape Town

WOULD you want to play Test cricket? Note the fine print: not could you or did you or are you or will you. Even if money, opportunity, skill and talent were no object, would you want to? The answer seems obvious, particularly among a certain cohort.

For them Test cricket is inviolate; the purest, most viscerally satisfying form of the game for players and followers alike. Who among the properly cricketminded would not want to play it?

The question rings particularly rhetorical in the throes of a febrile Ashes series and as India regroup in the Caribbean in the wake of losing the WTC final in June. Seeing the Big Three in whites simultaneously surely tilts the balance further towards the obvious answer. But, as with so much else, it depends who you ask.

Would Max O’Dowd want to play Test cricket? “Absolutely not. I mean, I love Test cricket. It’s great. But five days in the dirt with a red ball? That would be pretty tough. I’m quite happy playing white-ball cricket.”

How about his fellow New Zealand-born Dutch international, Logan van Beek? “I love Test cricket, and I love playing red-ball cricket — the feeling of bowling a seven or eight-over spell, and coming back after lunch and bowling another seven or eight-over spell; that battle between bat and ball and finding a way to get someone out.

“The satisfaction you get from winning a four-day game or a Test match, you can’t beat that feeling. You’re exhausted. You’ve given everything you can possibly give. Mentally you’re cooked. You’ve had nights of turmoil as the game ebbed and flowed. So, yes, a dream of mine is to play Test cricket.”

That dream has been realised by 3,247 men, 1,365 of whom made their Test debuts before January 5, 1971 — the day that heralded the beginning of the end of the game as we knew it, or the start of the wonderful spectacle cricket has grown into. Which is it? Again, it depends who you ask.

January 5, 1971 was the day Australia and England were at the MCG to play the first ODI.

More than 52 years and 4,793 more ODIs later, 2,135 T20Is — as of Thursday — have also been played, the first of them contested by New Zealand and Australia at Eden Park on February 17, 2005. Tests? Including the first, between Australia and England at the MCG in March 1877, and the current match in Dominica, 2,510 have and are being played. That’s an average of 17.19 Tests a year versus 92.19 ODIs and 118.61 T20Is.

Women have played just 145 Tests, or 5.78% of the male total. That’s why this analysis is focusing on the men’s game — to provide reasonable grounds for comparison. All told 6,524 places have been filled in teams playing men’s international cricket. Of those spots 1,535 have been taken by those who have featured in Tests only, 624 by ODI specialists and 2,100 by T20I purists. But since January 5, 1971 just 282 have been strictly Test players — 45.19% and 13.43% of the number of their ODI and T20I counterparts. Seven teams played Tests before the ODI era and 13, including ICC XIs, have thereafter. Twenty-nine sides have taken the field in ODIs and 100 in T20Is. Cricket’s direction of travel? It doesn’t depend on who you ask: the future is firmly, utterly, squarely skewed in favour of the white-ball game.

Moreover, as O’Dowd said, “It looks like full-member status sometimes can make life tougher for you.” Besides being expensive to host, Tests could take a team’s eye off the white ball. Having beaten Scotland, West Indies and England at the T20 World Cup in Australia last year, Ireland had reason to be bullish about securing one of the two ODI World Cup berths available at the qualifiers in Zimbabwe in the past few weeks. Or at least about reaching the Super Sixes. But they lost to Oman, the Scots and Sri Lanka — before beating the United Arab Emirates, the United States and Nepal — and went home after the group stage. That cost them the USD1-million they would have earned for reaching the World Cup.

The Irish went to the qualifiers directly from being hammered inside three days by England at Lord’s in June. In April they lost to Bangladesh in Mirpur and twice by an innings to Sri Lanka in Galle. Test cricket, as van Beek said, takes more out of players and teams than the white-ball game — more so if they aren’t accustomed to navigating the rigours and demands that come with playing for days at a time, which many international sides do not do domestically.

How are Ireland supposed to improve as a red-ball side considering they, like Afghanistan, have played just seven Tests each since both were elevated in June 2017? If teams don’t have to bother with Tests their white-ball form cannot suffer. The Dutch beat Zimbabwe and West Indies in the qualifiers and nailed down a berth at this year’s World Cup. How much of the Zimbabweans’ and West Indians’ failure to qualify can be ascribed to Test cricket getting in the way of their plans and preparations to play in global tournaments? Those formats are, financially and in realistic terms, the most important to them. And they don’t require what sides like the Dutch don’t have: decades of residual experience hard-wired into their game and their psyche by playing first-class cricket.

The Netherlands have featured in 34 first-class matches, all in the defunct Inter-Continental Cup from June 2004 to December 2017. O’Dowd played in five of them, his only caps in the format, scoring two centuries in nine innings. In his and the Dutch’s last game, against Namibia in Dubai in December 2017, he made 126 and took 1/6 and 2/26 in 15 overs of off-spin.

That sounds like reason to be hopeful for a first-class career, but O’Dowd was “quite happy where we are, as long as we keep competing and upsetting some of the big guys”. Like the Netherlands did by beating South Africa at the T20 World Cup — a result that shocked the world, but not the Dutch.

“It didn’t feel surreal,” O’Dowd said. “It didn’t feel like it was an amazing miracle. I felt like we just played really good cricket. South Africa weren’t terrible. In the past we’ve won games where we’ve been exceptional and the opposition’s been pretty poor, and that’s how we’ve been able to win. In that game I felt like we did what we do well, and South Africa didn’t play as well as they should have. And we won. It was just like any other game where a team beats the other team. It felt good but it wasn’t anything crazy. It was just good cricket — everyone doing what they had to do, taking our catches, everyone chipping in, no amazing performances. It was a good team effort.”

van Beek’s view is different. Maybe it’s in the genes. O’Dowd’s father, Alex O’Dowd, played 17 first-class matches for Auckland and Northern Districts. But that pales next to van Beek’s pedigree. His grandfather, Sammy Guillen, played five Tests for West Indies and three for New Zealand — whose first victory he clinched at Eden Park in March 1956 by stumping the Windies’ Alf Valentine. That done, he retired immediately. Valmai Berg, Guillen’s wife and van Beek’s grandmother, featured in eight first-class games for Canterbury. van Beek’s great grandfather and great uncle also earned first-class caps.

So van Beek’s path to Test cricket is possible, even plottable. He has played 28 matches for Canterbury and 27 for Wellington among his 70 first-class appearances, in which he has scored a century and taken eight five-wicket and two 10-wicket hauls. Most recently, for New Zealand A against their Australia equivalents in Lincoln in April, he took 4/72 and 3/61 and hit six fours in a 40-ball 39.

But there’s a catch. “If I manage to keep playing good cricket and New Zealand say they want to pick me for the Test team, there would be an opportunity cost,” van Beek said. “Because then all the Dutch stuff goes out the window. And it’s hard at the moment to deny the fact that what we’re doing is special. To be a part of it is amazing. There’s the World Cup in India and the T20 World Cup in West Indies [and the US] next year, where the connection is special. Those two events are going to be hard to turn down, but if I manage to make an impact in New Zealand it’s something I would have to seriously consider.”

Would van Beek want to play Test cricket, all things considered? The answer is obvious but it isn’t simple. Sometimes it doesn’t depend solely on who you ask. It’s also about who you are. Because people, not cricketers, play cricket.

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Winning or losing means little in final that decides nothing

“This is a call out to anyone who wants to play us. We’d love to have a fixture or two.” – Ryan Cook, Netherlands coach, on his team’s looming downtime.

Telford Vice / Harare Sports Club

NEITHER a bang nor a whimper accompanied the end of the men’s World Cup qualifiers ended at Harare Sports Club (HSC) on Sunday. Instead the final was a strange dance; a two-step of torpor and twitchiness conducted by teams on different trajectories towards a common goal.

Dasun Shanaka and Scott Edwards appeared with the trophy on the outfield on Saturday for the obligatory photo shoot, and greeted each other with the hearty handshakes and hugs of brothers. Perhaps the clearly warm words they exchanged concerned the fact that the decider was not a decider. By virtue of reaching the final, both teams will go to the World Cup in India in October and November.

That made Sunday’s match irrelevant. Even so, the Netherlands brought to it the same preppy energy that has propelled them throughout the tournament. They have had so much fun proving their point — that they belong at the global showpiece — that they were enthusiastic to prove it again. Sri Lanka, World Cup champions in 1996, skulked around the ground projecting a faint air of either embarrassment that they should have to put up with qualifying in the first place, or boredom with being there having done the job they came to do.

How had the realisation that they would have to qualify land with the Sri Lankans? “It was uncomfortable,” Chris Silverwood said. “It was a responsibility that we took very heavily. We knew we had to come here and perform. It’s tricky when you come to these places. One of the things that has been really pleasing for me is that every time we have been asked a question, we’ve managed to find solutions. That’s a sign of a good developing team, which is what we have here.”

The difference in the teams’ approach was captured across seven balls deep in the doldrums of the Lankan innings, each episode starring the irrepressible Logan van Beek. Sahan Arachchige reverse swept the first of those deliveries, bowled by Saqib Zulfiqar, into van Beek’s hands as he dived at a shortish backward point. Two balls later Charith Asalanka bunted Zulfiqar to midwicket and set off on a single that was never there. van Beek hustled to the ball and bustled his throw, which glanced the stumps with Asalanka millimetres from safety. Four balls after that Shanaka lazily dinked van Beek to mid-on, where Vikramjit Singh took a simple catch.

That took the Lankans from 180/3 to 183/6, and shrunk a total that had looked bound for at least 350 to 233. But, unlike teams like West Indies and South Africa, Sri Lanka do not often beat themselves. So it didn’t matter that their opponents were the most plucky, enterprising, ambitious team at the qualifiers. Objectively, the Lankans are a better side than the Dutch. Good luck telling the Dutch that.

They prevailed over the United States, Nepal, West Indies, Oman and Scotland — and lost to Zimbabwe and Sri Lanka — to reach the final. But Sri Lanka swept all before them: the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Ireland, Scotland, the Netherlands, Zimbabwe and West Indies. In the Super Six game between the finalists in Bulawayo two Fridays ago, the Lankans were dismissed for 20 fewer runs than on Sunday and still won by 21.

The matchwinning performers then were Dhananjaya da Silva, who took guard at 34/4 and was ninth out for 93, and Maheesh Theekshana, who dismissed Bas de Leede, Zulfiqar and van Beek in the space of seven of his deliveries. On Sunday, in the absence of a compelling batting remedy, the winning was done by Dilshan Madushanka, who removed Vikramjit, Wesley Barresi and Noah Croes in a new-ball spell of five overs that cost nine runs. And by Wanindu Hasaranga, who struck with his first delivery of the match by trapping Teja Nidamanuru in front and did the same to Zulfiqar four overs later to reduce the Dutch to 49/6 after 12. Hasaranga was denied two more wickets by umpire’s call, and Theekshana hastened the end by taking the last four for seven runs.

You can bring as much energy, enthusiasm, hustle and bustle to a contest as you can carry. But it will likely count for little if your opponents are the demonstrably superior side and, importantly, are able to corral enough of that superiority even when they don’t need to win. The Lankans did that on Sunday.

They twice topped 300 but it’s with the ball that they left their mark on the tournament. Going into Sunday’s game none of the nine other teams had taken more wickets than their total of 64, nor banked a better bowling average than their 18.68, nor a better economy rate than their 4.78, nor more five-wicket-hauls than their three — all by Hasaranga.

Not that most of the crowd cared. As expected, in the absence of Zimbabwe’s team they threw their support behind the Dutch, who had the good grace to applaud them from the field. A small section of fans on the grass bank had turned out to shout for Sri Lanka, and were joyous in their appreciation of the ground announcer splashing some papare music amid the usual fare.

They knew their team would win long before that was confirmed. They also knew the victory didn’t count for much, and that the going won’t be as easy once they get to the World Cup. The Dutch knew their impressive display in the qualifiers would have been expunged from most memories by the time they arrived in India.

As things stand they will not play a competitive match before that happens. “We’ll go back home and try and put a couple of fixtures together,” Ryan Cook said. “They don’t have any at the moment on the international circuit. This is a call out to anyone who wants to play us. We’d love to have a fixture or two. Our guys have not been to the subcontinent many times before. It would be good to have some fixtures somewhere in the subcontinent as well.”

Financial backing, too, was thin on the ground for the men in orange. “The 50-over World Cup, in particular, presents an opportunity playing India and other countries in India. That brings a lot of eyeballs to the screens. Hopefully we will be able to pick up a sponsor or two, and bring a bit more revenue into the game. It will take a bit of work from our end, and here’s a full invitation to any sponsors out there who feel like being on the front and the side of the shirt in the World Cup.”

No such pleas and promises were made after the game that was played between the pitch table and the boundary on the northern side of the ground on Saturday. HSC’s groundstaff have prepared the surface and the outfield for 10 matches in 22 days, and they have done so expertly and unerringly. Secure in the knowledge that they knew what they were doing with only the final to play, they pitched stumps in the outfield and spent some time in the sun enjoying the fruits of their hard work. Neither torpor nor twitchiness was in evidence.

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Rhymes with orange? Cricket …

“We don’t think about the things that we don’t have. We are grateful for the things that we do have and we maximise them.” – Logan van Beek

Telford Vice / Harare

IN a country where the prime minister and the royal family gad about on bicycles, it follows that news of the Netherlands clinching the last spot at this year’s men’s World Cup by reaching the final of the qualifiers in Zimbabwe is far from the front page.

That the most recently elected of those prime ministers, Mark Rutter, resigned on Friday along with his entire cabinet also helps explain why, if you’re Dutch, you’re probably not thinking about cricket this weekend.

Besides, in the Netherlands sport means football. Or tennis, hockey, speed skating, swimming or, of course, cycling. Or Max Verstappen. Cricket? That’s something people in England, Australia and India play. Not in the Netherlands, surely. Less cricketminded people in places like England, Australia and India would probably concur.

Not quite, and not for a long time. Cricket was one of the country’s bigger sports in the 1860s, and the Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond — or Royal Netherlands Cricket Board — was formed in 1890. The Dutch played their first match in 1881 and they were at the 1996, 2003, 2007 and 2011 ODI World Cups, and the 2009, 2014, 2016, 2019 and 2022 editions of the T20I version.

That’s one tournament short of half of all the men’s World Cups played. Yet the Netherlands aren’t often counted among cricket’s most prominent countries. Especially when the countries who consider themselves among them do the counting. But, at the final against Sri Lanka at Harare Sports Club on Sunday, the Dutch can look forward to being treated like royalty — even if there isn’t a prime minister or a bike in sight.

It will matter little to the crowd that the side in orange are not their beloved Zimbabwe, who veered off the path to India by losing their last two Super Six matches, against the Lankans and Scotland. Victory for Craig Ervine’s team in either of those games would have clinched the place that was secured by the Dutch.

It will matter even less that their opponents are the only unbeaten side among the 10 who started the tournament on June 18. What will matter is that the Netherlands have gone out of their way to see the Zimbabweans beyond the boundary. And to hear them.

If you’ve seen a match in Zimbabwe that has drawn a crowd of any size, especially at HSC, you’ve been treated to multiple renditions of Munowapirei doro. The Shona song’s magic isn’t in its lyrics — which translate to, “Why give them booze now? See, they’re drunk and talking nonsense.” — but in its rhythm, flow and sheer singability.

Having visited the country from September 2017, Max O’Dowd has heard his fair share of Munowapirei doro. “The first time I came here I heard people singing something in the background, and I didn’t make much of it,” O’Dowd said. “And then we came back for the recent series, prior to the South African series [in March]. I was on the field more and the fans were singing the song, and it was just the catchiest song I’d ever heard. Our local liaison officer told us about it and it caught on in the team.

“I happened to be humming it as we arrived in Zim this time. Some guy on Twitter was filming me and that went viral within the Castle Corner community. Every time I’m down in that corner now they sing the song. I love it. I don’t know the words but I know how it goes.”

What started with a simple song has become more complex. “The Zimbabwean people have made us feel so welcome, and made us fall in love with their culture,” O’Dowd said. “The people here have been amazing and the hospitality has been great. They are so kind, always willing to help. So it’s really easy to love the culture.”

The feeling will be reciprocated by the crowd on Sunday, when the Dutch will be heralded and serenaded as the adopted home side. “We would absolutely love that,” O’Dowd said. “It’s something we don’t experience very often as the Dutch cricket side.”

More often they experience the converse, because the Netherlands is a home for players adopted from other countries. Eight of their XI in the game against Scotland in Bulawayo on Thursday, when their World Cup place was confirmed, were born elsewhere. That can make them seem less like a cricket team than a United Nations project.

“I got sledged by Sean Williams about this; he called us the international side,” O’Dowd said. “I called him out on it. I said, ‘Do you speak the local language?’ He said no. I said, ‘Well, I speak Dutch so you got nothing on me, Sean.’

“We’re not the only team like that. You look at England, New Zealand, where people have tried different avenues or where families have moved. My mum’s Dutch and I grew up there when I was a kid. I’ve got 20 cousins in the Netherlands who absolutely love that I represent the Dutch. And I’m not the only one. We come together as one when we and we represent the Dutch.”

Other sides attach their playing philosophies to what they consider their national culture, or vice versa. It can be difficult to know where the players end and the patriots begin. India’s team have become, for many, exemplars and embodiments of India itself. What happens when this delusion bursts its banks was seen in the Lord’s pavilion on Sunday, where MCC members took Jonny Bairstow’s legitimate stumping as a national insult and behaved deplorably towards Australia’s players.

The Dutch are different, as Logan van Beek explained: “We spoke about this before the tournament, and that was the No. 1 thing that makes this team special — that we’ve got guys from New Zealand, Australia, South Africa, Pakistan, India, Holland; a whole melting pot. The connection is that we’re all Dutch. Yes, we all look different. Yes, there’s different names and things like that. But we’re all Dutch and we all fly under that banner. The power of diversity brings different flavours and different types of mindsets. If everyone’s open and willing to accept that it’s amazing what you can discover.”

Maybe van Beek should offer his services in other areas of society: the Dutch government fell on Friday because the four-party ruling coalition couldn’t agree on measures to curb immigration. If they had a culture closer to that of the national cricket team, maybe that wouldn’t have happened.

More specifically, what was the culture of Dutch cricket? “We don’t think about the things that we don’t have,” van Beek said. “We are grateful for the things that we do have and we maximise them. So if an indoor centre has a broken light or we’ve only got two new balls left, we’re going to find a way to make things work. Wherever we’re staying, whatever the training conditions are like, if we have delayed flights or bags get lost, we’re very adaptable. Not a lot fazes us.

“A lot of other teams have 100 times more resources than us, 100 times more players than us, and all those things and we could complain about all of those things. But we’re trying to maximise what we have, and when the full team buys into that and into getting every little ounce of skill, talent, passion, whatever you want to call it, it’s amazing what can be achieved.”

O’Dowd took a stab at the same question: “One day you’re playing on a beautiful cricket oval and the next day you could be playing on an artificial pitch on a football field with another 16 football fields next to it. But the fans have a lot of say in Dutch cricket, and they’re extremely passionate about the clubs and how to generate the best players.”

Warm fuzziness is all very well, but how does it translate into performance? In the details, like the Netherlands’ near obsession with running twos. Had they not hustled for 32 of them against West Indies at Takashinga on June 26 they wouldn’t have taken the group game to a super over, where van Beek blew the Windies away with bat and ball. Dutch batters have taken 155 twos during the qualifiers, more than any other side and enough to represent 17.5% of all the runs they have scored; also a high for the tournament.

“We’re sprinting from ball one,” O’Dowd said. “Even if we know it’s one run, we’re trying to create energy. We ran four twos in a row against Scotland [in Bulawayo on Thursday], and then [Bas de Leede] hit one straight to long-off. He should have been caught if the fielder was on the boundary. But because he had come off the rope to try and stop the two, it went over his head for six. It’s little things like that that take care of the bigger things.”

It’s also about getting the little things to add up to bigger things. Zimbabwe were the Netherlands’ closest rivals in twos terms with 134, and the United States were the nearest to them in percentage terms with 14.8. But the Zimbabweans have been shut out of their own party and the Americans limped home as the tournament’s only winless team.

No side at the qualifiers hit more sixes than West Indies’ 44, nor fewer than Sri Lanka’s 10. Yet the Windies have gone home in disgrace after failing to qualify for the World Cup for the first time in their history, and the Lankans are in the final against a side drawn from a country where the Topklasse comprises only 10 teams, who play on just five turf pitches.

Will realities like the latter be part of the narrative when the Dutch arrive in India in November? That while they have been among the bigger fish in the qualifiers’ small pond, they remain World Cup minnows?

“We understand where we come from and our roots and how people perceive us, but that’s not how we think,” O’Dowd said. “We’ll be going in and playing our brand of cricket. We’ve shown during this tournament what that’s about. We don’t really think about who we’re playing. We do our analysis and our work on the opposition, and we respect them. But that doesn’t mean we’re afraid of anyone. Because if we were afraid then what’s the point of even rocking up? We understand that it’s going to be extremely hard because the opposition will be playing against very good players and very good teams. If we can just get into the battle and a chance presents itself, we’ll take that chance. Then anything can happen.”

Like it did when the Netherlands beat South Africa in the men’s T20 World Cup in Adelaide in November. Or when they held their nerve against the Windies in the qualifiers. Maybe they will lose more than they win against the bigger fish, but there’s no knowing when they won’t. The prospect made van Beek bristle with competitiveness.

“The World Cup is a 10-team competition and we’ve earned the right to be there,” he said. “So we should be treated just the same as any other team that’s there. If they take us lightly they might cop the same thing as West Indies and other teams have in recent times. We believe in the style of cricket that we’re playing, and we have proven to ourselves that that style can beat teams. So we’re going to that tournament and saying, ‘We’re just as likely as you are to win on this given day and at this given time. Let’s go out there and battle.’”

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Windies woe after van Beek’s Dutch double

“You just go out there, keep your head still and hope for the best.” – Logan van Beek’s advice for super over success.

Telford Vice / Takashinga

TWO teams came to Takashinga on Monday dreaming of better days in the men’s World Cup qualifiers. One left holding a handful of hope, the other plunged into pointless purgatory. No such tension prevailed across town at Harare Sports Club, where one side already knew they were bound for bigger things when they took on their hapless, homeward-bound opposition.

The Netherlands are that hopeful side, having earned two precious Super Six points. But, as with all things worthwhile, they didn’t come easily. Instead it needed a super over to separate them from West Indies in a match that was left tied after 748 runs had been scored. The Windies will also progress from the group stage, but with no Super Six points. For a team who have won two World Cups and reached the final of another, that is a catastrophe.

In the super over, Logan van Beek clubbed Jason Holder for three sixes and three fours; all 30 of the Netherlands’ runs. Then van Beek took the ball, claimed two wickets, and kept the damage in West Indies’ reply to eight runs.

“We’ve got two points, that’s the main thing,” van Beek said. “That’s what we came here to do. We’ve given ourselves a chance to qualify [for the World Cup].” Did he expect those points to be so difficult to secure? “It was always going to be hard. West Indies come out and bully you in how they hit the ball. As a bowler it’s intimidating. But we held our nerve. They got away [to 374/6], but [between innings] some of our boys said that’s not enough. You just go out there, keep your head still and hope for the best.”

Christchurch-born van Beek’s grandfather, Sammy Guillen, played eight Tests for West Indies and New Zealand from December 1951 to March 1956. He wore his multiculturalism with pride: “I’m still West Indian, still Dutch and still Kiwi. My grandfather will be upstairs chuckling to himself that I actually hit the ball over the boundary and not to a fielder.

“I’ve trained a lot to bowl yorkers and to hit sixes. Sometimes the opportunity presents itself and you try to take it with both hands. If you stick at it long enough you’re going to have a moment like this. Just keep turning up and you never know what could happen.”

For the second time in three days — in the wake of West Indies’ loss to Zimbabwe at HSC on Saturday — Darren Sammy found himself lumped with having to make sense of it all. “We’ve got ourselves to blame, two crucial matches with points on offer where we’ve got ourselves into good positions and we’ve let it slip,” Sammy said. “It’s a true reflection of where we are as a team. A lot of things have to change. Some of the decisions we made makes you question what’s going on.

“I watched the way the Netherlands batted and the way they ran between the wickets, those are the things I need to try and instil in my team. It was a lesson for our guys. I can safely say we’re the worst fielding team in this competition. We cannot display this kind of attitude and call ourselves an international team.”

That the Dutch could keep abreast of a target 77 runs bigger than any they had successfully chased seemed unlikely. But as the runs rained up, down and all around in a brilliantly run 90-ball stand of 143 shared by Scott Edwards and Teja Nidamanuru, who hammered 111 off 76, Holder was heard loudly exhorting his teammates in the field to “be your brother’s keeper!” It’s a lesson the Windies will want to learn ahead of the challenges they will face in the coming days.

Zimbabwe, who beat the Windies and the Netherlands, will take four points forward. Either Sri Lanka or Scotland will join the home side on that perch after their match at Queens Sports Club in Bulawayo on Tuesday. The other game in the City of Kings, between Ireland and the United Arab Emirates at Bulawayo Athletic Club, is a dead rubber.

Unbeaten Zimbabwe lurched into a higher gear at HSC on Monday, putting up their record total of 408/6 and thrashing the United States by 304 runs — the second-biggest win in all 4,602 men’s ODIs yet played. Mercifully the yankees, who lost all four of their matches, are going home. As are Nepal, the UAE and, surprisingly, Ireland.

The Irish have been among the louder voices protesting the World Cup’s reduction to 10 teams, which was the case in 2019 and will be again in India in October and November. Not since 1992, when nine teams lined up, has the field been so small.

Ireland made their World Cup debut in 2007, when there were 16 teams, and they were among 14 in 2011 and 2015. They have won only seven of their 21 World Cup games and tied another, but their successes have tended to be if not seismic then significant — over Pakistan and Bangladesh in 2007, England in 2011, and West Indies and Zimbabwe in 2015.

The Irish have in the past made a decent case for a bigger World Cup, but they didn’t put their runs and wickets where their mouths are to get there this time. Muddled, unclear, uncertain selection let them down, and will cost them a USD1-million World Cup participation fee.

Happier stories in the qualifiers have been told not only by the Dutch but also by Oman and Scotland, who both beat Ireland. The Scots earned two Super Six points for overcoming Oman despite being depleted by players opting to stay with their English counties rather than turn out for the national side.

The Netherlands, too, have been significantly undermined by county commitments. That didn’t matter on Monday, when the most motivating place the Dutch could be was with their backs against the wall. They will never forget Takashinga.

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