da betobet： Netherlands captain Roland Lefebvre admitted his side had been "hammered" byPakistan, but defended his side’s participation in the tournament, arguingthat the only way to improve was to play against the best
Charlie Austin21-Sep-2002Netherlands captain Roland Lefebvre admitted his side had been "hammered" byPakistan, but defended his side’s participation in the tournament, arguingthat the only way to improve was to play against the best.Pakistan needed just 16.2 overs to reach the Netherlands 137 run target asImran Nazir scored 59 from 40 balls and Shahid Afridi blitzed 55 from only18, the second fastest one-day fifty."Ya, we got hammered in the end," admitted Lefebvre. "I didn’t expect it toend that quickly. I thought they might play some shots but I hoped we mightbe able to contain them a bit a longer. It was disappointing, but they havegot some very clean hitters of the ball who really got going."However, he tried to look on the bright side, particularly their stubbornbatting which had seem them bat out the full 50 overs, Lefebvre leading theway with an unbeaten 32."I was pleased that we batted the full fifty overs, which was an improvementon our earlier game – we have to look for the positives and that was one,"he said. "Hopefully, next time, we will also score some more runs."He defended his decision to bat first: "The wicket was flat and I justthought we had to be positive and try to get 180 or so on the board. Thebatsmen have to take some responsibility by batting first. As players youcan run but you can’t hide."Although Netherlands lost both their games by massive margins, Lefebvreargued that it was essential for his side to play as much competitivecricket as possible."There is a big gap between the major and minor cricket nations but you don’t solve the problem by not playing each other," he said. "The minor nationshave to compete at this level to improve. There is a lot of hard work to bedone."Pakistan captain Waqar Younis was happy with the performance of the toporder, claiming that the attitude of the players was better than during theSri Lanka game."I thought the body language was a lot better in this game than the lastmonth or so and the boys were more keyed up although the opposition wasdefinitely weaker," he said."I am glad that we have started to play better. This may not be a big winbut it’s a positive with so much serious cricket coming against Australiaand South Africa."Pakistan will now remain in Sri Lanka for the forthcoming Test seriesagainst Australia, which is to be played in Colombo and Sharjah. Pakistanwill be without key players, including Inzamann-ul-Haq and Yousuf Youhanawho need surgery for long-term injuries, and Wasim Akram and Saeed Anwar whoare keen to take a break.Waqar appeared supportive of their decision to rest: "We don’t want to burnout these old heads in the team. We have a lot of serious cricket coming up,especially in South Africa and we want to be fresh."