Porterfield, Balbirnie stretch Ireland advantage
The Netherlands lower-order batsmen kept their team in the game on the third day of its ICC Intercontinental Cup clash against Ireland in Malahide, but the higher-ranked home side sped away to a position of strength by close of play on Thursday.
Starting the day on a precarious 140 for 5 in response to Ireland’s 477 for 6 declared, the Netherlands battled hard through Max O’Dowd, who scored his maiden first-class century, and Logan van Beek to get to 309 for 7. But once their 160-run stand for the seventh wicket was broken with the fall of O’Dowd for 105 – Boyd Rankin picking up his third wicket of the innings – the innings unravelled quickly to finish on 375, 102 runs behind.
In its second dig, Ireland scored quickly to reach 167 for 4 by the end of the day, an overall lead of 269, with the big runs coming from William Porterfield, unbeaten on 89, and Andy Balbirnie, the first-innings double-centurion, who scored 50.
Rankin struck for a fourth time when he sent back van Beek for 76 and then wrapped up a five-wicket haul with the scalp of Tobias Visee, the wicketkeeper-batsman contributing 30 runs in just 39 balls from No. 9. Rankin ended with 5 for 49, while Tim Murtagh and Jacob Mulder picked up two wickets apiece.
Ireland had gained the upper-hand in the four-day game on the first two days after riding on Balbirnie’s unbeaten 205 to post a big total and then running through the top order of the Netherlands with some degree of ease after the visiting side had won the toss and opted to field.
Rankin picked up the first two wickets to fall, those of Wesley Barresi and Saqib Zulfiqar, with just nine runs on the board, and it was only Daniel ter Braak’s patient 32 and Ben Cooper’s battling 82 that kept the Netherlands afloat.
O’Dowd, whose runs came off 151 balls and included 16 fours and a six, and van Beek, who batted for 146 balls and hit 12 fours and a six, stretched the good work of Cooper and ter Braak, on first-class debut along with Zulfiqar and Visee, and might have done enough to prevent Ireland from running away to its fifth outright win in the tournament.
Even then, only one team – Ireland – is in a position to win this game and to prevent that from happening, the Netherlands must put up a stronger all-round batting performance in its second innings on a fourth-day pitch and not depend on one or two batsmen to bail it out.