It was under head coach Rinus Michels and with players like Johan Cruyff in the lineup that the Dutch national football team brought to the spotlight the philosophy of total football: a tactical system where any outfield player can take over the role of any other player in a team.
Following their big win against South Africa at the 2023 ODI World Cup, Netherlands cricket team skipper Scott Edwards attributed ‘total cricket’ as the mantra to their success.
“As a group, we pride ourselves on playing total cricket: guys that are coming in at number 9 or 10 but have just as much ability to put on partnerships. Out there batting with them was just about giving us a chance to go harder later in the innings. Luckily, Roelof (van der Merwe) and Aryan (Dutt) played some unbelievable cameos to get us what we thought was round about the par score,” Edwards told reporters after their 38-run victory over the Proteas in Dharamsala.
The Dutch skipper, who was top scorer on the day with an unbeaten 78, was accompanied by van der Merwe (29 off 19) and Dutt (23 off nine), adding 64 runs for the eighth wicket and 41 runs for the ninth. This, after South Africa had managed to reduce them to 140/7 with nine overs left to be played in the innings.
Dutch seamer Paul van Meekeren added that it was the contrasting vulnerability of the South African lower order batting that he and his fellow bowlers looked to exploit having gotten 245 runs on the scoreboard.
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“We felt pretty comfortable with the total. We knew we had to start well because their top six is very comfortable and they’ve got a lot of firepower in there. We felt from 7 to 11, there’s a real weakness there. So we spoke about if we got the opportunity to open up one end, we had to take it,” he’d tell reporters after the game.
South Africa’s number six David Miller, whose wicket by Logan van Beek looked to have ended all Proteas hope, weighed in on the matter of a short batting lineup and how it played on his mindset in a tricky chase.
“That was partly why I was batting the way that I was. I didn’t want to give anything away and just wanted to make sure that I was being responsible and put us in position to still win the game,” Miller said post-match.
