A dramatic win by Zimbabwe. This ODI reminds me of PSL final played few days back and in both matches 4 runs were required on very last ball and in both games only 2 runs were scored. Netherlands needed 19 runs in the last over and last batting pair was on the crease. Fred Klaassen was only able to score 2 runs on last ball. Good fielding in deep extra cover as ball was racing for 4 runs. Series is now level and the third ODI will decide who will be the winner. Zimbabwe need to perform well, there performance is very disappointing.
Zimbabwe, despite getting funding of $12 million per year from the ICC has shown no improvement in the performance. On the other hand, the Dutch are performing exceptionally despite the fact that they receive only $300,000 per year from the ICC. With a little more funding for their development program, the Netherlands would be able to get competitive against the top sides. Two days later, there is an ICC meeting to decide on the fund allocation for the next cycle. It needs to be seen whether the allocation for teams like Netherlands get increased or not.
This was a great performance from the Netherlands side. I know they didn't win. But I can say people expected a worse performance from the Netherlands. Especially with the amount of money Zimbabwe is getting, they were supposed to perform a lot better and actually win convincingly against the Netherlands. But the win by Zimbabwe against the Netherlands by only one run is of course not very convincing. And the Netherlands did win the first match as well.
The next match is going to be the decider. If the Netherlands can win this series, I would hope that ICC will actually give them a lot more money than they are giving them right now