Netherlands look to continue tournament dominance over UAE

UAE will look to improve their record against Netherlands in ICC events in Geelong on Sunday. The Group A matchup will follow the tournament's opening game between Sri Lanka and Namibia at Kardinia Park in Geelong.

In their opening match, CP Rizwan and his squad will face Scott Edwards and the Netherlands, which is sure to be a heated contest. The two teams have played each other eight times in T20 internationals, and each team has won the same number of games. However, the Dutch have fared better in ICC tournaments. Three of their four wins over the UAE have come in qualifiers or the World Cup.

However, the UAE can take heart from their courageous performance against the West Indies in the warm-up match. Although they lost, Junaid Siddique and Muhammad Waseem played well. Waseem's unbeaten 69 and Siddique's five-for kept his team in the hunt. Even though they lost by 17 runs, it was a great effort against a team widely regarded as superior in terms of experience and quality.

Netherlands also lost their warm-up match but they faced Scotland, a side on par with their quality and experience. Their bowlers did a good job to restrict Scotland to 151/7, with Brandon Glover and Bas de Leede picking up three wickets each. But the batting unit failed miserably as there was hardly anyone other than Max O'Dowd who troubled the Scotland bowling attack. 

The Dutch had a disappointing outing in the last edition as well. They bowed out from the tournament in the group stage itself as they lost all of their three matches. Edwards will be expecting a much better performance from his side this time but the batting needs to step up.

Key Players

Zahoor Khan: He is the UAE's key player with the ball. Khan has played 34 T20Is so far and has claimed 41 wickets while maintaining an excellent economy rate of 6.88. The right-arm pacer bowls in all phases for his team and is their go-to bowler whenever they need breakthroughs. He bowled a brilliant spell of 4-024-2 in the warm-up match against West Indies, which includes the key wickets of Shamarh Brooks and Nicholas Pooran.

Bas de Leede: The 22-year-old all-rounder took some time to reach his full potential but now that he has arrived, it will be quite hard to stop him. De Leede has been in sensational all-round form this year having amassed 289 runs at a sensational average of 72.25 in T20 internationals, while also claiming 10 wickets at 10.70 runs per piece. Although he couldn't do well with the bat in the warm-up match against West Indies, De Leede still bowled a brilliant spell of 4-0-20-3.

Predicted Playing XIs

Netherlands: Stephan Myburgh, Max ODowd, Vikramjit Singh, Bas de Leede, Tom Cooper, Scott Edwards (c & wk), Roelof van der Merwe, Timm van der Gugten, Shariz Ahmad, Fred Klaassen, Brandon Glover

UAE: Muhammad Waseem, Chirag Suri, Aryan Lakra, Vriitya Aravind (wk), Chundangapoyil Rizwan (c), Basil Hameed, Aayan Afzal Khan, Zawar Farid, Karthik Meiyappan, Junaid Siddique, Zahoor Khan