Dutch star Borren grateful for Indian sojourn

MUMBAI: One person in Mumbai had a beaming smile after Netherlands' T20 upset of England on the opening night on Friday. It was Sachin Bajaj, director of the Global Cricket School. As part of the Netherlands team's preparations for the 2011 World Cup qualification games in South Africa, seven Dutch players travelled to Bangalore to train for a week under the Global School's programme.
There were six batsmen and left-arm spinner Pieter Seelar. Said Bajaj on Saturday, ``More than the money I earn it is results like these that makes my day. My interest right form my days with World Cricket Academy has been to help the underdog cricketers.''
The Global Cricket School had brought the Dutch team to Mumbai before World Cup 2007 also when we got to see Alexei Kervezee, who was, at 18 the youngest of the 2007 Cup.
In Bangalore, after a long winter of indoor training for most of the players, the Dutch got to train outdoors on grass wickets continuously for a week. Secondly they got to work on their technique and develop an effective game plan when facing spin bowling. At Lord's the Dutch were not very adept at facing leggie Adil Rashid but hung on.
Peter Borren was the man who shook England with two sixes after they lost early wickets of Kervezee and Bas Zuiderent, the youngest member of the 1996 World Cup.
In his blog , Borren wrote in his blog about the Indian sojourn: ``Using our feet to get to the pitch of the ball, using soft hands into a gap for the quick single, giving ourselves room to play through the offside, different variations of the sweep, using the depth of the crease and playing late, these are the attributes of a good player of spin bowling. The middle overs of a fifty-over contest are more and more being dominated by bowlers who take the pace off the ball, the majority of whom are spinners............
``This is an area that as a national team we have certainly struggled with in the past. This is an area that as a national team we have certainly struggled with in the past. If we can develop a more deliberate game plan , one in which we have several shot options, not only to rotate the strike, but also to find the boundary, it will help us to carry the momentum hopefully achieved by the powerplays throughout the innings. A big thanks to Umesh Patwa and his band of bowlers, we really appreciate all the hard work from you. I hope that we can make this a regular feature of our preparation. There is no doubt in my mind that it was a very productive exercise.''