Nepal played their first league match of T20 WC 2024 against Netherlands on June 4 at Grand Prairie Stadium. Netherlands won the toss and opted to bowl first where Nepal were packed under the score of 106 under 19.2 overs. Netherlands successfully chased the target with the help of brilliant bowling performances and calm and composed batting of Max O'Dowd.

Let's talk about plenty of things that went wrong for Nepal which resulted to the loss in this crucial encounter against the Dutch side:

Lack of Approach for Strike Rotations

The Nepali batter played a total of 33 dot balls throughout the innings. It showed the players' intent of playing more stroke plays rather than focusing on singles and doubles. Most of the players seemed to be in pressure of dot balls where they wanted to play sweep shots and other harsh shots for the boundaries to get going.

This becomes a major point since we can cleary observe that more than half runs of the score chase by the Dutch side (i.e. 61 runs) came off from singles and doubles thanks to the calm and composed innings of Max O'Dowd. 

Not utilizing the quota of full 20 overs: 

Had they played full 20 overs and didn't rush out for watch and hit strategy specially for the last wicket, the score could have increased farther by 5-10 runs. Both of the first two balls of the last over went for a wicket where they could have looked for capitalising remaining 4 balls too. However, the batsman for the last wicket Abhinash Bohara went blindly for aerial shots which doesn't seem to be the actual neccessity for the situation.

Unnecessary Shifting of Batting Order Again

We've seen this very often with Nepal cricket team where someone is promoted the order and some one is demoted. There are very few cases where the Nepalese middle order batters batted consistently on the same positions.

During the match against the Netherlands, we could see Sompal Kami being promoted in place of Gulshan Jha where we can assume that it was for the build-up in partnership and strike rotations. However, we doubt if Gulshan Jha wasn't capable of that role. On the other hand, Kushal Malla never seemed to stay on the wicket and build partnership and observe how the ball reacts. He, along with many players tried to charge and play strokes more than looking for singles and doubles to reduce pressure.

Lack of Pressure Handling

We might have heard of the phrase 'Catch dropped, match dropped'. Similar scenario was created when there was plenty of catches dropped and a missed runout chance. To be more specific, explosive Vikramjit Singh was dropped twice, a simple runout chance was missed by Abhinash Bohora, a properly set batsman who had played more than 40 balls, Max O'Dowd was dropped on a sitter by skipper Rohit Paudel which can be called one of the most crucial turning point in the match.

On this very important stage for associate teams like Nepal, the players delivered a poor fielding performance which led to the shift in momentums multiple times and played huge part in the loss against the Dutch side.

Specifically, when Netherlands had a reuired run rate of more than 6, the preoperly set batsman on 40s Max O'Dowd was dropped on a sitter. This played a major role for the loss because had the catch had been taken, the new batsman along with non-striker Bas de Leede who had just played some balls, would find it difficult to charge with the few number of balls they had faced. The match could have lasted a bit more and who knows we could have encountered a last over thriller. The Dutch side were without a boundary since many overs before O'Dowd decided to deal with boundaries in the second last over after the crucial catch drop.

Bowling Rotation

It isn't a debate that the bowling departments gave all of them to restrict Netherlands as lower as possible. The ground fielding was top notch too, special mention to the 'Tiger' Dipendra Singh Airee. Not to forget, Airee delivered with an economy of 3 at just 2 overs of his spell providing 6 runs with a wicket.

However, it felt like DS Airee deserved more overs since he was bowling at a low economy rate and was one of few wicket takers during the match. The skipper didn't seem to be interested for utilizing the remaining two overs of Airee. If he wasn't to be bowling in the death overs, the skipper could have managed some overs earlier since he was bowling good deliveries. Paudel did good bowling rotations overally while this case might be reffered as a tiny error that could make huge difference.

Furtherly, Netherlands played very well playing according to the condition with a very smart captaincy, proper bowler rotations and top field placements. Nepal seemed to be lacking proper approach for batting and having some crucial fielding nightmares. 

Nepal should capitalise on these factors to deliver improved performances in the remaining matches of the group stage rather than 'still learning' mentality on multiple occassions. The statement might seem harsh but its time that we deliver on this big stage given the continuous matches played over these months. At the end, not many only consider the efforts when the main thing that matters is a win.