Five county-contracted players in Dutch squad for Windhoek

A strong Dutch men’s squad, including five county-contracted players, will travel to Windhoek next week for a League 2 tri-series against Namibia and Canada.

With the Netherlands having dropped to fifth place in the eight-team table following a disappointing visit to Oman last November, in which they lost three of their four matches against the hosts and the UAE, Ryan Cook’s side need to at least hold their own against the Canadians (currently in third place) and the home side (two points behind the Dutch but having played four more games).

Only four sides will qualify directly for the 2027 World Cup qualifier, and for the Netherlands that is a top priority. With the pitches at the Wanderers likely to be more sympathetic to pace, Cook and captain Scott Edwards will be particularly pleased to be taking six quick men in their 15-member squad, including key left-armer Fred Klaassen (Kent), who because of county commitments and injuries last donned the orange in Nepal twelve months ago.

Klaassen adds important variety to an attack which will also include seasoned campaigners Timm van der Gugten (Glamorgan), Durham allrounder Bas de Leede, Paul van Meekeren, Viv Kingma and Kyle Klein.

A relatively recent addition to the side, the 23-year-old Klein has made an extremely promising start to his international career, claiming 16 wickets in his eight ODIs at 16.56 apiece, and 14 more in eight T20Is at 12.28.

By contrast with the sextet of seamers, the squad includes just one specialist spinner, Aryan Dutt, who is still only 21 but whose off-breaks have earned him 51 wickets in his 46 ODIs to date.

But further spin options will be available to Edwards in the form of Colin Ackermann, primarily a top-order batter but also a useful purveyor of off-spin when necessary, and 22-year-old English-born Zach Lion-Cachet, who makes his first overseas trip with the Dutch side.

On the books with Sussex, allrounder Lion-Cachet made his international debut in the T20 series against Canada and the USA last August, and the Windhoek excursion will doubtless help to integrate him into the Dutch set-up.

Whether he gets a game will depend in part on the form of the rest of the middle order, where he will presumably be competing for a place with Noah Croes and Teja Nidamanuru.
The top order looks comparatively settled, although there will still be decisions to be made about whether to play all three potential openers, Max O’Dowd, Michael Levitt and Vikram Singh, with one of them batting at three.

They will likely be followed by Ackermann, Edwards and De Leede, with a further decision then to be made about the inclusion of another batter as against strengthening the attack.
Nidamanuru batted at seven last time out, in the one-run defeat by Oman last November, but with Shariz Ahmad, Roelof van der Merwe and Ryan Klein from that squad all absent this time, the composition of the first-choice eleven is bound to be somewhat different.

The Dutch will play their first match against Canada on Wednesday, 5 March, followed by games against Nambia (7 March), Canada again (11 March) and finally Namibia (13 March).

The full squad is:
Scott Edwards (Kampong Utrecht, captain), Colin Ackermann (Durham), Noah Croes (Voorburg), Aryan Dutt (Hermes-DVS), Timm van der Gugten (Glamorgan), Viv Kingma (Voorburg), Fred Klaassen (Kent), Kyle Klein (HBS Craeyenhout), Bas de Leede (Durham), Michael Levitt (Voorburg), Zach Lion-Cachet (Sussex), Paul van Meekeren (Rood en Wit Haarlem), Teja Nidamanuru (VRA Amstelveen), Max O’Dowd (Kampong), and Vikram Singh (VRA).

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