Warner, Maxwell shine as Australia cruise past Netherlands with ease
Cricket
Glenn Maxwell smashes fastest World Cup century
NEW DELHI (Dunya News) – A quality performance in all three sections guided Australia to produce an enormous 309-run victory over the Netherlands in a group stage match of the World Cup 2023 in New Delhi on Wednesday.
Aussies bundled out Netherlands for 90 runs as they were pursuing a giant target of 400 runs. No any player except opener Vikram Singh scored above 20 as three of the batters went for duck.
Adam Zampa took four wickets while Mitch Marsh claimed two wickets. Mitchell Starc, Josh Hazlewood and Pat Cummins grabbed one scalp each.
Earlier, an impressive batting by David Warner and Glenn Maxwell helped Australia post a mammoth total against Netherlands.
Aussies suffered an early blow when Logan van Beek removed Mitch Marsh for 9 but Warner maintained his form and smashed 104 runs off 93 balls.
Later, a fastest century from middle order batsman Glenn Maxwell, who made 106 off 43 balls, boosted the total for his side. Steve Smith made 71 and Marnus Labuschagne scored 62 runs.
Logan van Beek took three wickets while Bas de Leede and Aryan Dutt claimed two and one wicket, respectively.
Earlier, Australia won the toss and elected to bat first.
Pre-match Coverage
Aussies come into the match with back-to-back wins over Sri Lanka and Pakistan. However, facing the Netherlands is not an easy task, especially after the Dutch defeating South Africa a few days ago.
Australia will look to continue salvage their Cricket World Cup 2023 campaign when they take on the Netherlands at the Arun Jaitley Stadium in Delhi on Wednesday.
Australia were off to a horrible start in the showpiece event as they suffered defeats against hosts India and South Africa. Two successive losses made people, not least of all, Australia's 2015 World Cup winning captain Michael Clarke doubt the team's chances of qualifying for the semi-finals.
However, the team has bounced back in style putting together comprehensive wins over Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Australia are still out of the trouble completely as they need to keep winning in order to finish inside the top-four of the World Cup points table at the end of the round-robin stage of the tournament.
But things are not going to be easy for the Pat Cummins led side as standing in their way next are the Netherlands who have already completed a giant-killing act in this tournament.
The Dutch defeated South Africa in Dharamasala to pull off a shock win. This World Cup has already served plenty of drama as along with the Dutch win, Afghanistan have defeated reigning champions England and former champions Pakistan.
The Dutch will feed on their own famous win and also draw inspiration from Afghanistan as they face a resurgent Australian side.
AUSTRALIA'S RESURGENT BATTING
After their first two matches, no Australian batter had managed to score a fifty. But the batting unit has come back to life as in the last two outings Australia has scored two fifties and two hundreds.
Bowling too is looking in good shape with Adam Zampa picking back-to-back four-wicket hauls against Sri Lanka and Pakistan.
Australia's chase for the World Cup glory will be further boosted by the return of Travis Head.
The big hitting batter was sidelined for the first few games of the World Cup as he suffered a fractured hand ahead of the World Cup. Head has now recovered from the injury and had an intense training hit-out in the nets to gear up for the match.
So far in this World Cup, the Netherlands come up with some inspired performances. It started with all-rounder Bas de Leede claiming 4 wickets against Pakistan. He backed the four-wicket haul with a fighting fifty in an unsuccessful chase.
In the defeat against New Zealand Colin Ackermann came up with a gritty half-century.
Then came captain knock by Scott Edwards that sparked the team's revival against the Proteas.Edwards' fifty was followed by wickets from de Leede, Logan van Beek, Paul van Meekeren and Roelof van der Merwe that finished off big hitting South Africans.
Sri Lanka had the Netherlands struggling at 91/6, but van Beek and Sybrand Engelbrecht came up with inspired fifties that took the team to a healthy total of 262. Aryan Dutt then bowled wicket-to-wicket and claimed 3 wickets. Unfortunately for him he found little to no support from the other end, or else the Netherlands could have completed another surprise win!
Although Australia are the favourties to win this match, but the Netherlands will give them a hard time, and who knows may also finish on the winning side at the end of the match.
