ICC World T20: England Done In By Dutch Delight

England’s lackadaisical fielding efforts cost them heavily as they lost the lung opener of the ICC World Twenty20 in England to the unlikely Netherlands.
There are only two ways in which a lowly ranked team can beat one of the Test teams – either the lesser known team performs out of its skin or the top team plays at its worst. It was a combination of both that accounted for England’s demise at Lord’s in the first match of the second edition of the Twenty20 tournament.
The Netherlands team chased down England’s team with gusto. But there was fortune in plenty as well. England, on numerous occasions, were guilty of not being able to effect run outs, even in obvious cases where as a renowned Test team, they would have been expected to make an easy time of it. Instead the Dutch team battled it out, stuck to their guns and in the end, were rewarded for persisting against the odds.
Darron Reekers led the way opening the innings but it was Tom de Groot who quickly took control of the Netherlands innings and the match his forty-nine runs from thirty balls were invaluable in terms of pacing the Dutch innings to perfection, Borren playing his part with thirty and Ryan ten Doeschate adding his own role to the drama.
With Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff both sitting out, England may have struggled against other teams. But they were not expected to flounder so badly against the Dutch. Earlier Ravi Bopara and Luke Wright gave the England team a good start building on a 102 run opening partnership in which Wright made seventy-one from forty-nine balls and Bopara forty-six from thirty-four England though failed to move on and eventually succumbed to a rather underachieving total of 163.
The Netherlands floundered in the final over, needing just seven runs. However, Doeschate and Edgar Schiferli ran a wild run to a wilder overthrow from Stuart Broad that gave the second run that the Dutch team needed off the final ball to cause the first big upset of the tournament and Paul Collingwood has had an inauspicious start to his second stint as captain of England.