Scotland U19s go down by nine wickets to Netherlands

Scotland U19s captain Calvin Burnett won the toss and elected to bat at Les Quennevais against Netherlands. Scotland made one change from the side that was victorious against Jersey, with Keith Moron replacing Richie Lamb.

Ollie Hairs and Freddie Coleman once again opened for Scotland and Hairs made his intent known from the off as he defended the first delivery from Klaus and then hit the next two balls to the boundary. Unfortunately, he missed the fourth delivery and was clean bowled. Scotland 8 for 1.

This brought Marc Petrie in and before he had really settled he edged a van Meekeren delivery to Alexei Kervezee at slip and Scotland were on the back foot at 16 for 2. Ewan Chalmers came in at number four, and the Dutch bowlers continued to make life difficult for the Scots, although the occasional bad ball was dispatched to the boundary by both batsmen.

With nine overs gone, van Meekeren struck again, yorking Chalmers with the score on 42. This brought Matthew Parker and Coleman together and they set about consolidating the batting, doubling the score in 14 overs before Freddie Coleman was beaten by Lucas Brouwers and was smartly stumped by Stijn Allema. Coleman had made 29, including three fours.

Parker, who had been dropped by van der Brandeler at second slip when he was on 13, made the most of this let-off as he and Craig Wallace put on 49 for the fifth wicket before Wallace was out, giving a simple catch to Luten at mid-on off the bowling of Olivier Klaus. And 11 runs later the same combination saw Mathew Parker depart, having made 45 from 91 balls, including four 4s, leaving Scotland on 144 for 6 in the 38th over.

Once again it was captain Calvin Burnett who stepped up to the plate, as he had done against Jersey, and a quickfire 51* in only 41 balls, along with contributions from Keith Morton and Safyaan Sharif, saw the Scots close their innings on 229 for 7, the second day running that they had posted in excess of 200.

Best bowlers for the Dutch were Olivier Klaus 3 for 39 with and Paul van Meekeren with 2 for 53.

After the interval, the Netherlands opened with Alexei Kervezee and captain Stijn Allema, and they started cautiously against the opening attack of Matthew Parker and Patrick Sadler.

In the early overs, the bowlers beat the bat on a number of occasions, and edges just did not go to hand. However once they got settled, the batsmen blew the Scots away with some aggressive batting.

Calvin Burnett rotated his bowlers in a desperate attempt to get the breakthrough, to no avail, as both batsmen first reached fifty and then Kervezee, the Worcestershire batsman, reached the magic hundred when he edged Sharif just past the keeper to the boundary.

Eventually the breakthrough came when Matthew Parker had Allema trapped in front for 76, but it was too late. The Dutch had taken the score to 217, the second-highest partnership in the history of the U19 Championship.

Gruijters joined Kervezee and they saw the Dutch home by nine wickets, with six overs in hand, Kervezee unbeaten on 137 from 129 deliveries, including 13 fours and 2 sixes

Overall a disappointing performance by the Scots, and they must now regroup before meeting Denmark on Wednesday (16 July) at the same ground, knowing that any further defeats could seriously damage their chances of progressing to the next qualifying stage of the U19 World Cup.

After two matches, Ireland top the group with 4 points,  with Scotland, Denmark , Netherlands and Jersey on 2 points and Guernsey still to get off the mark.

 [scorecard]  [photos]