South Africa vow no let-up against Dutch

Netherlands’ captain rues lack of opportunities for minnows.

MOHALI: South Africa will not lower their guard against the Netherlands as they look to build on a good start to their World Cup bid, said coach Corrie van Zyl.

The Proteas thumped the West Indies by seven wickets in their opening Group B match last week and want to keep up their momentum.

“We want to win the game and that’s very important for us,” said the South African coach.

Van Zyl said South Africa would field their strongest team in today’s clash despite playing a non-Test playing nation. “We need to field our strongest combination,” said van Zyl, whose team have never won the World Cup.

“Netherlands, not so easy”

The coach said South Africa had good bowling resources to draw on after their spin attack of Johan Botha, Imran Tahir and Robin Peterson kept the West Indies in check. He said the Netherlands had good players and could not be underestimated.

“The Netherlands are a team that bowl wicket to wicket. They have a good spinner in Pieter Seelaar. They have got some very good batters.”

However, skipper Graeme Smith remained confident and said South Africa will be more flexible in their approach this time around in an attempt to reach the World Cup final for the first time.

“Sometimes when you come up with things and it works out, it’s a great thing. Spin worked for us against the West Indies and we will reassess going into the next game against the Netherlands.”

Borren’s dilemma

Meanwhile, Dutch captain Peter Borren rued not playing full members often to get enough match practice. According to him, a lack of consistency of high-level competition belittles the associates at the mega event.

“How do you think a full member would go if they didn’t play other full members for four years and then had to come into this World Cup,” he questioned. “We don’t play at this level enough and we played fantastically against England and poorly against West Indies and that’s the second and third one-day against full members we’ve had in two years.”

Inconsistency is the main problem for the Netherlands, who shone against England but were brittle against the West Indies. They will now be keen to put in an improved all-round show. The Netherlands managed to stretch England in their opening match, thanks to Ryan ten Doeschate’s superb all-round performance. He was to test England again as a seamer when he took two of the four wickets to fall, but lacked support from the other end as England comfortably achieved a big target.

Published in The Express Tribune, March 3^rd, 2011.