ICC/CricketEurope

The Netherlands came back from the shock of Friday’s defeat by Italy with a relentless, record-breaking demolition of a hapless Norway, winning by a massive 370 runs.

Winning the toss and batting first, the Dutch took full advantage of a small ground, fast outfield and severely limited attack to rewrite the national record book.

In the course of 50 overs,

• they registered the highest-ever total by The Netherlands in an international one-day match, their 474 for eight beating the 425 for four set against Israel in the 1986 ICC Trophy
• Darron Reekers’s 196 was the best individual score for his country in a one-day international, surpassing Rupert Gomes’s 169 not out, also against Israel, in the 1990 ICC Trophy
• Reekers’s opening stand of 290 with Tom de Grooth (96), made in just 32.5 overs, was the highest for any wicket for The Netherlands, beating the 251 by Steve Atkinson and Rob Lifmann, also for the first wicket, as part of that total of 425 for four.

Reekers was simply unstoppable: his first hundred came off 58 balls, and he faced another only another 49 in going on to 196; in all he hit 20 fours and 12 sixes.

De Grooth was almost as devastating, hitting 11 fours and three sixes in his 94-ball innings, and all the Norwegian bowlers came in for heavy punishment as the total mounted.

Shahid Ahmad switched his attack at frequent intervals, but nothing stemmed the flow of boundaries, even once De Grooth was caught behind off the bowling of spinner Shahbaz Butt, who suffered worst with figures of one for 107 off his ten overs.

No-one stayed for long as the Dutch batsmen sought to maintain the momentum, but 163 runs runs came off the last fifteen overs, and 115 off the last ten.

The largest contribution came from Edgar Schiferli, who smacked five fours and three sixes as he made 44 off 17 balls in the closing stages. Zeeshan Ali was the main beneficiary of the pursuit of quick runs, taking four for 87 including the priceless wicket of Reekers, who fell just four runs short of what would have been an historic double-century.

The Norwegians lost Zaheer Ashiq in the second over of their reply, and Ehtsham ul Haq five overs later when Geert Maarten Mol replaced Schiferli.

Mol struck again in his next over, and Norway were 29 for three. Sameer Sachdev again held things together for a time, adding 22 for the fourth wicket with Khalid Khurram, but when Schiferli returned from the opposite end he quickly started the rot, dismissing Sachdev and Shahbaz Butt with successive balls.

That made it 51 for five, but further resistance came from Khurram and Shahid Ahmad, who put on 30 for the sixth wicket, Shahid top-scoring with 29. Schiferli then removed Khurram, going on to claim two more and finishing with five for 52 as Norway were all out for 104.

The winning margin of 370 was a record for the European Championships, but it fell well short of the world record for an official one-day game: at last year’s South Pacific Games in Apia, Samoa, Papua New Guinea beat New Caledonia by 510 runs!