The Netherlands had the best of the first day of the Intercontinental Cup match against the UAE at Abu Dhabi, bowling their hosts out for 164 and putting on 158-3 before stumps. Four wickets for Michael Rippon and a brisk half century from Stephan Myburgh ensured the visitors ended day one in control, with Roelof van der Merwe offering fine support with bat and ball.

Having lost the toss and been invited to bowl, the Dutch quickly imposed themselves on the match. Vivian Kingma set the tone with a pair of wickets in his opening spell, clean bowling Mohammad Shahzad with an inswinging yorker before knicking off Muhammad Kaleem to Borren at first slip to reduce the UAE to 20 for 2.

Shaiman Anwar and Swapnil Patel steady the ship putting on 37 for the third wicket in circumspect fashion, but van der Merwe put an end to the partnership - Anwar's edge giving Borren another in the slips - and then ended Mohammad Usman's attempted counter-attack, having him caught in the deep after the young debutant had brought up the UAE's 100 with three consecutive boundaries.

Kingma struck again with the first ball of his next spell to break Usman Mushtaq's stumps, and the Emirati resistance was broken soon after in a flurry of wickets. Haider provided Borren's third slip catch of the day off Max O'Dowd, before Rippon came on to wrap things up - ending Patil's 68-ball vigil courtesy a smart Barresi stumping with his first ball, and cleaning up the tail in short order to finish with figures of 4-45.

Together with Rahil Ahmed, Rippon negotiated the remaining seven overs of the afternoon session without undue diffculty to see the Dutch to 26-0 at Tea. Despite the loss of Ahmed in the first over after the break, the visitors would have the best of the evening session too.

With support from Rippon and van der Merwe, Stephan Myburgh brought up his half century off just fifty balls, and by the time he went for 62 - chopping slow left-armer Fahran Ahmed onto his stumps, the Netherlands had racked up another 100 runs to take them to 127-3.

Myburgh's wicket would be the last of the day to fall, a van der Merwe pressed on to add another 31 runs with skipper Peter Borren to finish the day unbeaten three runs shy of his fifty, with his side trailing by just 6 runs with seven wickets in hand.