Zimbabwe opened their tour of the Netherlands with a comprehensive 6-wicket win over their hosts, whose shortcomings with the bat were ruthlessly exposed at Amstelveen yesterday.

The visitor's new-ball pair Tendai Chatara and Chris Mpofu - who had struggled against Scotland last week - systematically dismantled the Dutch batting line up, with eight wickets falling in the first hour as the hosts crumbled to 40-8 in 14 overs.

It fell to number eight Logan van Beek to save the host's blushes, Wellington's newest signing making a creditable unbeaten 64. Together with Glamorgan's Timm van der Gugten he added 86 for the 9th wicket and another 16 with last-man Paul van Meekeren to get the Dutch as far as 142, but that was never going to be enough on a pitch that was lively early but essentially true.

It was far from plain sailing for Zimbabwe in the chase, four wickets falling as the Dutch pace attack bowled with hostility and intent and spinners Michael Rippon and Roelof van der Merwe showed their quality, but with so few on the board the result never looked in doubt, Craig Ervine's 44 from number 3 proving more than enough to build a successful chase.

Having won the toss and elected to bat first, Netherlands skipper Peter Borren was swiftly made to rue his decision as he found himself at the crease at the beginning of the ninth over. In the preceding forty minutes he had watched Chatara run through his top order, openers Barresi and Myburgh edging behind whilst Rippon and van der Merwe fell to top-edged pulls in successive balls.

Five balls later he got to witness a wicket close up as Ben Cooper edged behind to give Chris Mpofu the first of his three wickets, and fifteen balls after that the Dutch skipper himself became Chatara's fifth victim, fending a short ball up for Ervine to claim his third catch. Sikander Zulfiqar and Shane Snater then fell in successive deliveries from Mpofu, and a sub-fifty total looked a distinct possibility.

Van Beek and van der Gugten were able to arrest the collapse however, with Zimbabwe skipper turning to spin to find the next breakthrough as the pair first doubled the score and then took the hosts to three figures. It eventually came some twenty overs later when van der Gugten lofted a looping drive off Sikandar Raza out to Williams on the long on boundary for 34, but he and van Beek had at least saved some face for the hosts.

Van Beek looked a class apart from his team-mates, regularly dispatching the short bowling that had caused the top order such trouble to square leg rope when Cremer returned to seam. He would run out of partners in the end however, when van Meekeren gloved a bouncer from Solomon Mire behind to close the Dutch innings an hour before lunch.

The hosts would have needed a handful of wickets in the dozen overs before the break to breathe life back into the contest, but in the end they found only two. Though both van der Gugten and Snater looked a handful with the new ball, both beating the bat and finding edges on occasion, it was not until van Beek produced a spectacular over-the-shoulder diving catch off Snater tracking back from point to dismiss Mire that the hosts had anything to celebrate.

Mire's opening partner Hamilton Masakadza would also fall before lunch, looking to heave van Beek over the leg side only to lose his off stump, but the Dutch lead was already down to double figures by then and with eight wickets in hand the Zimbabweans will have been largely unworried at the break. Two more wickets would fall after lunch, Sean Williams edging Rippon to Borren at first slip with 74 on the board and Ervine fending a van Meekeren bouncer the same way, but before going Ervine had compiled and attractive 44 including a handful of eye-catching back-foot drives for four, and the visitors needed just 21 more.

Sikandar Raza would get the there in style, pulling a flat six into the boards at midwicket off van Meekeren to cap off a fluent unbeaten 31 and a commanding 6-wicket win for his side. A disturbingly one-sided affair in the end, with the Dutch batting order proving even more brittle than predicted.

Though the host's bowling attack looked entirely capable of defending a half-decent total, and the batting is unlikely to collapse quite so dramatically for three matches running,a dramatic turnaround will be required for the hosts to avoid the ignominy of a 0-3 scoreline.