Lucknow: Netherlands head coach Ryan Cook believes his batters being involved in four run-outs was a major reason behind the seven-wicket defeat against Afghanistan in the Men’s ODI World Cup and reiterated that his team will try to improve this aspect of the game, while valuing every run they take in their running between the wickets.
“We do pride ourselves on running between the wickets and it’s something that we actually practice, probably not much like other teams, but we do put a lot of time and effort into it. Our turning technique and our running between the wickets in terms of the speed and stuff, we do a lot of training on that. So that’s something that our game is built on and we do pride ourselves on that.”
“As you can see four runouts and you know not just any run outs that are two, three, four and five in your batting order getting run out not ideal and probably some decision-making inside of that as well. So, we’ll have to go back and have a look at that but it won’t stop us, it’s part of our DNA of our team and we’ll keep trying to run between the wickets and value every run like we do,” said Cook in the post-match press conference.
With him admitting that semi-finals looks a distant target for the Netherlands, Cook said his team will now look to strive for betterment in their remaining league matches against England and India.
“We’ve come out and said we wanted to make the semifinals. I think all the teams would have wanted to do that at the start of the tournament and I certainly would want to play for a coach and a captain that sort of wants that from the team and believes in the team that they can achieve that.”
“We’ve still got two games to go, and we can get ourselves up to four wins. That’s sort of what we’ll be talking about in the change room from now on. Semifinals obviously look very distant from here. But I think at the end of the day, we keep striving to be a better team day by day and be putting in big performances in the next couple of days.”
With 2025 Champions Trophy qualification still up for grabs, Cook believes making into it will also be a motivation for the Netherlands. “We obviously found out about the Champions Trophy Qualifications just the other day. We were aiming for just obviously in this tournament; we weren’t playing for what was going to go further.”
“We’ll obviously have to look at how that looks now, going into the game against England and India, and that’ll be certainly something on the guys’ minds in terms of something to play for.”
“But the guys are a very proud team. We’re all proud of what we’ve done here, and we’ll obviously be keep pushing for wins, and we owe it to the tournament to continue to do so. So, we’ll keep pushing on in the next two games,” he concluded.
–IANS