The Netherlands head to South Africa for men’s T20 tour

The Netherlands will start their preparation for the 2024 T20 World Cup early in the New Year, naming a strong 16-man squad travelling to South Africa for a seven-match programme against some of the country’s top T20 sides.

The tour will also help several of the SA20 franchise teams with their preparation for this season’s competition, which begins on 10 January with a game between the Sunrisers Eastern Cape and the Joburg Super Kings at St George’s Park, Gqeberha (previously named Port Elizabeth).

The Dutch will be playing two matches against the Sunrisers there on 4 and 6 January, before moving on to the Western Cape, where they will play two games against the Paarl Royals and one against MI Cape Town, a Mumbai Indians’ colonial outpost, at Newlands on 8 January.

The tour will end in Johannesburg, where the Netherlands will take on the Lions, whose normal beat these days is the CSA four-day and one-day competitions, having been supplanted for T20 purposes by the Joburg Super Kings (a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Chennai franchise of the same name).

Dutch national coach Ryan Cook has been able to include twelve players from the squad which took part in the recent 50-over World Cup, the only omissions being Colin Ackermann, Logan van Beek, Bas de Leede and Roelof van der Merwe.

There is a return for Voorburg pace bowler Viv Kingma and for HCC and Leeward Islands left-arm spinner Daniel Doram, both of whom missed out on the World Cup, while a notable inclusion is off-spinner Aryan Dutt, who has not until now featured in Cook’s T20 planning but whose contribution to the World Cup campaign was outstanding.

The squad also includes two uncapped players, South African-born batter Michael Levitt and pace bowler Kyle Klein, whose elder brother Ryan dropped out of the World Cup party through injury but who has now recovered sufficiently to also be included.

The full squad is:

Scott Edwards (captain), Wesley Barresi, Shariz Ahmad, Noah Croes, Daniel Doram, Aryan Dutt, Sybrand Engelbrecht, Viv Kingma, Kyle Klein, Ryan Klein, Michael Levitt, Paul van Meekeren, Teja Nidamanuru, Max O’Dowd, Vikram Singh, Saqib Zulfiqar.

Following their return from South Africa the Dutch squad will soon be on the road again, since they will open their ODI League 2 campaign with a tri-series against Nepal and Namibia in Kathmandu from 10-24 February, followed by a T20 tri-series against the same opponents, both of whom have qualified for the T20 World Cup in June.

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