Arlene Kelly returned her second career five-wicket haul in the T20 format and captain Gaby Lewis led by the front in the run chase with a half-century as Ireland brushed aside the Netherlands at the Women’s T20 World Cup Europe Qualifier.<\/p>\n
Losing the toss, Lewis initially rued the missed chance to bat first on what looked a flat batting track.<\/p>\n
However, that disappointment soon turned to delight as the Irish bowlers struck early and restricted the Netherlands to 36-1 in the first powerplay.<\/p>\n
Babette de Leede (23) and Rabine Rijke (25) sought to consolidate the Dutch innings, but Kelly was then thrown the ball.<\/p>\n
The medium-pace all-rounder ran through the Dutch batting line up, including taking wickets on the last two balls of the innings.<\/p>\n
Kelly’s player-of-the-match performance was the second time she had registered a five-wicket haul, today\u2019s 5-14 just shaded as her best by her 5-12 against the same opponent in 2023.<\/p>\n
The Netherlands were bowled out for 110 from 18.5 overs, while well below par it at least gave the home side something to bowl at.<\/p>\n
In comparison to the totals Ireland have posted in recent times, a reading of the scorecard may have given the impression of a languid innings, but nothing could be further from the truth.<\/p>\n
Despite losing Christina Coulter Reilly (7) early, Lewis (56) and Orla Prendergast (49) dug in and played an adaptive innings on a pitch that was playing low, slow and difficult to navigate at times.<\/p>\n
Lewis paced her innings well, hitting the gaps with her customary drives through the off-side or pull shots through mid-wicket.<\/p>\n
Prendergast chose a more aerial route at times \u2013 her six off de Lange was a perfectly timed loft over mid-off.<\/p>\n
In the shadow of victory, both Lewis and Prendergast fell, but Amy Hunter scrambled through for a single off the first ball of the last over to claim victory.<\/p>\n
With one game still to play, Ireland have now officially qualified for the World Qualifier that will be held in Nepal in January.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Arlene Kelly returned her second career five-wicket haul in the T20 format and captain Gaby Lewis led by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":95563,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[1721,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-95562","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\/95562","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=95562"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/95562\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/95563"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=95562"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=95562"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=95562"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}