{"id":464562,"date":"2026-02-07T14:36:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T14:36:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464562\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T14:36:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T14:36:08","slug":"t20-world-cup-pakistan-survive-netherlands-scare-in-opener","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/464562\/","title":{"rendered":"T20 World Cup: Pakistan survive Netherlands scare in opener"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The Netherlands made a positive start to their innings at the Sinhalese Sports Club after they were asked to bat first as opener Michael Levitt thumped 24 off 15 balls.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Bas de Leede continued the momentum with a composed 25-ball 30 and, at 105-3 with De Leede and Edwards at the crease, the Netherlands looked set to post a competitive total.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">But the Associate nation lost their last six wickets for 20 runs as Mohammad Nawaz, Abrar Ahmed and Saim Ayub picked up two wickets apiece.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Sahibzada Farhan&#8217;s classy 47 off 31 balls guided Pakistan to 98-2 before he slapped Aryan Dutt to cover to start a Pakistan collapse as Roelof van der Merwe and Paul van Meekeren bowled tightly.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ashraf spared their blushes, though, when he hammered three sixes and a four off the penultimate over from Logan van Beek, the Netherlands missing a chance to dismiss him on seven when Max O&#8217;Dowd shelled a catch at long-off.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">With five needed from the final over Ashraf got himself on strike then thrashed De Leede through cover for four to prevent a shock.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Netherlands made a positive start to their innings at the Sinhalese Sports Club after they were asked&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":464563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[43,44,41,39,42,40],"class_list":["post-464562","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464562","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=464562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/464562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/464563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=464562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=464562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=464562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}