Netherlands are a good team and will be competitive in Australia, believes Ryan Campbell
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After the Netherlands secured Qualifier title and thus a ticket to Australia, Ryan Campbell believes that they will be highly competitive in the main tourney. The Aussie, who is the head coach of the team, has also added that they had worked through some issues and was happy that it paid dividends.
It was a disciplined performance by the Netherlands team in the T20 World Cup qualifiers as they went on to lift the trophy in what was their third appearance in finals of the tournament's six editions. Roelof van der Merwe, Timm van der Gugten, and Brandon Glover kept the right lines and lengths to trouble PNG from the very beginning and that ensured PNG, who had already qualified for the main event in Australia, could manage to score only 128. A successful chase followed and that led coach Ryan Campbell to believe that they will go with a good team and be competitive in Australia next year.
"This is a young team and let's see how they go. We have based our T20 game on getting 160 and not 200 and in the last two games, you have seen that you need to swallow your ego. We had full faith in our fast bowlers and the surfaces were not that neat as everyone thought it would be. When you are facing 145kph it is going to be tough. We are going to go there (to Australia) with a good team and be competitive," Campbell said at the end of the game, reported Cricbuzz.
The Netherlands were clinical all throughout the tournament and five wins out of six games in the league stage was a testimony to it. However, that doesn't mean everything was hunky-dory for them ahead of the tournament as the team had to deal with a lot of issues like injuries and unavailability of the players. Campbell applauded the team for showing composure.
"Very relieved to be honest. We worked through some issues - we had some injuries, unavailability of the players but this group of players stuck together and dug deep. Fantastic performance. The youngsters we played all season, like the Glovers and Freddie Klaasen and we even had a leggie who couldn't get a chance as the fast bowlers were going so well," the former wicket-keeper added.
