Pakistan might have secured a 3-0 series win against Netherlands by winning the last ODI by a close margin of 9 runs yesterday, but the Pakistan skipper Babar Azam was not sure which opposition he was playing against because while analysing the game in the post match presentation ceremony, Babar credited the “Scotland” bowlers for doing well, while he was actually playing a game against Netherlands.
It was the last game of the series and Pakistan, having already won the series, made some changes in the playing XI and also batted first under challenging conditions, but the Netherlands bowlers never really allowed the Pakistan innings to get going. Apart from Babar Azam himself, who scored 90 odd runs and batted till the latter stages of the innings, no Pakistan batsman could make a significant contribution.
Babar Azam praised Netherlands, but called them “Scotland”
However, the Pakistan bowlers still put in the hard yards and managed to prevent an upset, as Netherlands fell short of Pakistan’s score by 9 runs. Babar Azam praised the opposition players after the game and admitted that they bowled in the right areas in the first innings of the game when the conditions were challenging for the batsmen, but Babar refered to Netherlands as “Scotland”.
Both Netherlands and Scotland are associate nations of the ICC at the moment and while both of them have the official status to play the white ball games, they don’t have the test status yet which is why they aren’t able to play the full member countries of the ICC often enough.
This was the first ever bilateral ODI series between Pakistan and Netherlands. Before this series, whenever Pakistan and Netherlands had played against each other in an ODI, it was always in an ICC tournament. But this series took place because it was scheduled in the calendar of the newly introduced ICC ODI Super League.
