New York has hosted four World Cup games in the last week, and the locals who knew nothing much about cricket seven days ago are starting to feel pretty familiar with this odd sport in which anything above a hundred runs could well be a match-winning total, fours and sixes are as hard to come by as home runs, and the USA, Canada and the Netherlands are all genuine contenders for the title. The Dutch came awfully close to knocking off South Africa at the Nassau County Ground on Saturday, but lost, in the end, by four wickets with just seven balls left to spare.
Given that the Netherlands won this fixture in the last T20 World Cup, and then again in the ODI version last year, the result must count as yet another upset in a week that’s been full of them. It was mostly down to David Miller, who scored a superb 59 off 51 balls, the most anyone has made at this ground yet. He shared a stand of 65 with Tristan Stubbs.
