Will Young and Henry Nicholls sensational partnership of over 150 runs, helped the Blackcaps to clinch their maiden win against the Netherlands on Tuesday at Bay Oval.
New Zealand suffered an early blow in the chase, however, Will Young and Henry Nicholls kept the scoring rate going and were at their fluent best. The Kiwi batter Will Young played a phenomenal inning to score his maiden ODI century (103*) and showed a balance of calmness and aggression to a great effect on the field.
After the match, New Zealand debutant Will Young revealed that he hasn't played much cricket in summer. The batter said: "To be honest, it's been a bit of a funny summer, I haven't played as much cricket, as I normally would have. I'm just taking it each game as I play, I'm just trying to make the most of every single opportunity I have in the middle there."
He also added, "I sort of feel that this summer is a little bit similar to the previous summer. If you remember, Bangladesh came at the end of last summer and I got a couple of opportunities there. So, I'm sort of in a similar scenario, I guess playing against the Netherlands at the end of this home summer is helpful. It's a nice way to finish playing some white-ball cricket and you can go out there and express yourself."
While the debutant Will Young led his side to an easy victory with an outstanding performance for NZ and was named man of the match, Henry Nicholls too played a vital role in today's inning scoring 57 runs of 79 balls. Together, the players managed to get a partnership of 150+ runs against the Dutch bowlers.
Earlier, a four-wicket haul from Blair Tickner on his ODI debut helped NZ in bowling out visitors to 202. Tickner finished with 4/50 from his ten overs, claiming Vikram Singh and Bas de Leede in his first spell, before returning to pick up Logan van Beek and Pieter Seelaar.
Blackcaps and the Netherlands will now gear up for the 2nd One-Day International which will be live on Amazon Prime Video on April 2.
( With inputs from ANI )
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