Nepal to host Netherlands and Namibia ahead of T20 World Cup 2024

The Netherlands and Namibia will tour Nepal for a bilateral ODI series each. The three teams will then play a T20I tri-series ahead of the next T20 World Cup 2024 in June. All three teams have qualified for the tournament. The series will be played in February-March 2024.

The six ODIs will be part of the World Cricket League 2. The Netherlands have named their ODI and T20I squads for the tour. The cricket board said that they were not able to send their full-strength squads as “players have injuries or commitments elsewhere”.

The T20 World Cup is a 16-team tournament with the top 8 teams earning direct qualification. The rest eighth teams had to play the qualifiers in Zimbabwe last year to earn their qualification. The hosts of the qualifier Zimbabwe themselves could not qualify for the multi-team event. 

Twelve out of the sixteen players in the squad were part of the Netherlands’ squad in the historic ICC Cricket World Cup 2023. Logan van Beek, Colin Ackerman, and Saqib Zulfiqar are the key missing players in the squad. Regular skipper Scott Edwards will lead the 16-man squad.

The Netherlands will play a Tri-Series against the hosts Nepal and Namibia under CWC League 2. The series starts on 15th February and will end on 25th February. Nepal, Netherlands, and Namibia will also engage in a T20 series after completing the CWC League 2 series.

The Netherlands recently played in the ICC World Cup 2023 where they won two games and lost seven out of the nine league games. They defeated South Africa and Bangladesh and lost to teams like India, Australia, England, New Zealand, Sri Lanka, and Afghanistan. Namibia could not qualify for the World Cup as they last played Netherlands in the ICC World Cup 2023 qualifiers. The Dutch side were victorious by seven wickets in the contest.

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The Dutch team last toured Nepal in April 2021 for the T20I tri-series including Malaysia. Nepal won that series defeating the Netherlands itself in the final. Nepal recently played in the T20 World Cup qualifiers and managing to qualify has earned them their next step in international cricket. 

Nepal and Oman secured qualification to the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup 2024 after they reached the final of the Asia qualifiers held in Nepal on Friday. The host beat the United Arab Emirates by eight wickets in the semifinal while Oman thrashed Bahrain by 10 wickets.

Netherlands Squads For Nepal Tour 

Netherlands ODI squad: Max O’Dowd, Vikramjit Singh, Noah Croes, Shariz Ahmad, Aryan Dutt, Teja Nidamanuru, Scott Edwards, Michael Levitt, Vivian Kingma, Wesley Barresi, Sybrand Engelbrecht, Roelof van der Merwe, Bas de Leede, Kyle Klein, Olivier Elenbaas

Netherlands T20I squad: Max O’Dowd, Vikramjit Singh, Noah Croes, Shariz Ahmad, Aryan Dutt, Teja Nidamanuru, Scott Edwards, Michael Levitt, Vivian Kingma, Wesley Barresi, Sybrand Engelbrecht, Roelof van der Merwe, Fred Klaassen, Kyle Klein, Timm van der Gugten, Daniel Doram (reserve player)

Netherlands, Namibia Tour Of Nepal-Schedule