The seasoned left-arm spinner struck two massive blows to pile on the pressure. Bavuma was cleaned up by an arm-ball that skidded through while Rassie van der Dussen lost his composure to play a reverse sweep straight to backward point. In between, Paul van Meekeren dealt South Africa a huge blow by castling Aiden Markram. The surface didn’t really change much from the Netherlands innings and there was value for good strokeplay still. However, the odd ball perhaps skidded a bit and there was definite help for the quicks early on.

A lot rested on MIller and Klaasen for South Africa to get across the line, and the pair were looking quite comfortable in the middle. But it was that kind of a night in Dharamsala when the rub of the green almost always went Netherlands’ way. A harmless short ball  down leg-side, a delivery that Klaasen would have frequently dismissed to the fence was the one that saw him hole out to fine leg. It was a massive moment in the game as South Africa were just starting to gain momentum in the chase.

Marco Jansen had a struggle in the middle and after he fell, the pressure told on Miller who himself perished to an ill-advised slog across the line. Gerald Coetzee had been giving him decent support till that point but the situation perhaps got the better of the left-hander. With his dismissal went South Africa’s hopes and it was about the margin of victory as far as Netherlands were concerned. They did concede a few towards the end with Maharaj having some fun but the end result was a very comfortable win for them.

It indeed was a roller-coaster win for the Netherlands who were on the brink earlier in the afternoon. Put into bat, they were tottering at 50/4 and 82/5 before skipper Edwards got into the act. As he has often shown in the past, the wicket-keeper batter played with utmost resolve and took the innings deep in his calculative manner. He was particularly severe on Maharaj, employing the sweeps to good effect. South Africa still had the upper hand with regular strikes and had the game in their hands with Netherlands at 140/7. It’s there that the game started to turn in a big way.

Van der Merwe joined his skipper to produce a rollicking 64-run stand that came off just 36 balls. The former in particular was audacious and adventurous, thereby taking the South African bowlers by surprise. His aggression meant that Edwards didn’t have to bother much about the scoring rate although the Dutch skipper himself upped the ante at the back end. Dutt also followed this up with a cameo of his own as a whopping 104 runs came off the last nine overs. It was an incredible flip of events in the game and that momentum clearly drove Netherlands through into the second half. The target was still gettable but South Africa’s batters had a rare off day after being in top form over the last few weeks.

Brief scores:
Netherlands 245/8 in 43 overs (Scott Edwards 78*, Roelof van der Merwe 29; Teja Nidamanuru 20,  Aryan Dutt 23*; Marco Jansen 2-27, Kagiso Rabada 2-56, Lungi Ngidi 2-57) beat  South Africa 207 in 42.5 overs (Quinton de Kock 20, Heinrich Klassen 28, David Miller 43, Keshav Maharaj 40; Geral Coetze 22;  Logan van Beek 3-60, Roelof van der Merwe 2-34, Bas de Leede 2-36, Paul van Meekeren 2-40) by 38 runs