Netherlands welcome county foursome for Oman series

The Netherlands will be reinforced by the availability of four county-contracted players when they travel to Oman for next month’s League 2 tri-series against the hosts and the UAE, with a three-match T20I series against Oman to follow.

The four returnees are the Durham pair of top-order batter Colin Ackermann and all-rounder Bas de Leede, who will be joined by Somerset allrounder Roelof van der Merwe and Glamorgan seamer Timm van der Gugten.

The fifteen-man squad will be augmented for the T20 series by the addition of VRA’s Teja Nidamanuru, who missed the latter part of the Dutch summer because of injury.

Of what would be a full-strength Dutch squad the party will perhaps miss only Logan van Beek and Tim Pringle, both of whom will be committed in New Zealand’s domestic season.

The Netherlands are currently third on the League 2 table, level on points with the USA and four points behind leaders Canada, who have played four more matches.

With the UAE in last place, with just one win from seven games, and Oman two spots higher with one win more, Scott Edwards’ side will be keen to consolidate their position at or near the top of the table.

The availability of Ackermann, who averaged over 45 in both the first-class and one-day formats during the recent English season, should greatly strengthen a sometimes-fragile Dutch top order, although he has yet to produce his best form in the 38 matches he has so far played for his adopted country.

De Leede, on the other hand, is often at his best when wearing day-glo orange, and Edwards and coach Ryan Cook will be delighted to have his wicket-taking capacity and hard-hitting potential back in the side.

Van der Gugten had another good season with Glamorgan, while Van der Merwe, now something of a T20 specialist and just two months short of his fortieth birthday, is currently rolling back the years for Northerns in the CSA T20 Challenge.

The return of the county foursome means that half-a-dozen players who turned out against Canada and the USA in August will miss the Oman trip, including the veteran Wesley Barresi, up-and-coming youngster Zach Lion-Cachet, Ackermann and De Leede’s Durham colleague Brandon Glover, left-arm spinner Daniel Doram, and leg-break exponent Saqib Zulfiqar.

But the other eleven are all retained, so Ackermann may bat at four, after Michael Levitt, Max O’Dowd and Vikram Singh, with Noah Croes perhaps making way for De Leede and Edwards able to bat at six.

Van der Gugten will join a pace unit which includes Paul van Meekeren, Viv Kingma and Kyle Klein, with the latter’s elder brother Ryan’s role depending to a large degree on his fitness; for his Voorburg club side Klein senior was restricted to off-breaks and gentle medium pace as he came back from injury.

He is, however, an increasingly valuable asset with the bat in the lower middle order, and that applies as well to unorthodox wrist-spinner Shariz Ahmad, who will share the slow bowling duties with Aryan Dutt, Van der Merwe, and where necessary with O’Dowd.

The full squad is:
Scott Edwards (Kampong Utrecht, captain), Colin Ackermann (Durham), Noah Croes (Voorburg), Aryan Dutt (Hermes-DVS Schiedam), Timm van der Gugten (Glamorgan), Viv Kingma (Voorburg), Kyle Klein (HBS Craeyenhout), Ryan Klein (Voorburg), Bas de Leede (Durham), Michael Levitt (Voorburg), Paul van Meekeren (Weston-super-Mare), Roelof van der Merwe (Somerset),Teja Nidamanuru (VRA Amsterdam, T20Is only), Max O’Dowd (Kampong), Shariz Ahmad and Vikram Singh (both VRA)

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