{"id":413135,"date":"2026-02-07T15:52:16","date_gmt":"2026-02-07T15:52:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/413135\/"},"modified":"2026-02-07T15:52:16","modified_gmt":"2026-02-07T15:52:16","slug":"t20-world-cup-pakistan-survive-netherlands-scare-in-opener-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/413135\/","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":412855,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-413135","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-cricket","tag-cricket","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413135","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=413135"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/413135\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412855"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=413135"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=413135"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=413135"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}