Over a month into the World Cup, who would have expected the defending Champs to languish at the bottom, with their European counterparts situated above them?
But here we are, with the Netherlands taking on England in a battle of no.9 vs no.10
But don't take it as a dead rubber since a ticket to Pakistan is on the line, with the top 8 teams of the tournament along with host Pakistan being the only nations who will get a chance to participate in the 2025 Champions trophy
England: Jos Buttler said before the World Cup that they are not defending Anything. For real they aren't played like defending champions. A team like England failed miserably to perform in the World Cup. The overall performance has been disappointing. The batting form of Bairstow and Root cost them many matches and the leadership of Buttler is questionable. Buttler had been poor with the bat and worse as captain. The Return of Ben Stokes didn't make any impact and The bowling was never up to the mark they solely relied on their batting and failed. The only motivation left for them to finish in the top 8 and qualify for the Champions Trophy, dismantle this team and Buttler should go with new faces in the Champions Trophy. England is well and truly back in their true form of the 2015 WC now Buttler has only one chance to become the revolutionary and change the script of this England side for future tournaments.
Netherlands: the Netherlands is the Team that impressed everyone with their performances. The standing in points table won't do justice to this team's performance but they played better than many giants. The Netherlands won only 2 matches but they came close many times but they fumbled and lost the game. The Captaincy of Edwards is the positive for the the Netherlands and that will help them to improve for the future and the best motivation for them to beat England, Qualify for the champions trophy, and become the Best Cricket team in Europe in WC 2023. The Top-order batting is quite not up to the mark in this WC but the assistance they are getting from the lower order is what made them a challenging team. The bowling of the Netherlands has been exceptional, meekran and Logan van Beek made sure they gave the best start, and De Leede, Van der Merwe, and others contributed very well
Playing 11 :
England - Johney Bairstow, Dawid Malan, Joe Root, Jos Buttler (C/WK), Ben Stokes, Liam Livingston, Moeen Ali, Chris Woakes, David Willey, Adil Rashid, Mark Wood
Netherlands - Wesley Barresi, Max ODowd, Colin Ackermann, Sybrand Engelbrecht, Scott Edwards(w/c), Bas de Leede, Saqib Zulfiqar, Logan van Beek, Roelof van der Merwe, Aryan Dutt, Paul van Meekeren.
Stats :
- The Netherlands have lost all their six ODIs against England
- Max O'Dowd has a batting average of 14 and a strike-rate of 70 across seven games
- Jonny Bairstow has an ODI hundred in Pune
- Joe Root has scored a total of 18 runs in his last four games
When: England vs Netherlands on November 8 at 2:00 PM local
Where: Maharashtra Cricket Association Stadium, Pune
What to expect: A decent batting surface is again expected. Two of the three World Cup games here have been won by teams chasing.
