“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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