Cricket World Cup: Ten Doeschate rues one that got away

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NAGPUR: Ryan ten Doeschate was left musing on what might have been after the Netherlands narrowly failed to record a sensational victory over England despite his stunning century and two wickets.

The Essex all-rounder dominated England's attack in a show of impressive power, hitting 119 as the Dutch piled up 292 for six in their World Cup opener at the VCA Ground in Nagpur on Tuesday.

The medium-pacer then took two wickets for 47 runs but England captain Andrew Strauss's 88 and an unbeaten 30 from ten Doeschate's county colleague Ravi Bopara helped the Test side to a six-wicket win with eight balls to spare.

"It's a massive disappointment," South Africa-born ten Doeschate said. "You could see it when we came off the field there.

"We genuinely thought we had a chance of defending 290 and at a lot of stages in the game we looked like doing that.

"I don't think it was our best bowling performance and I think if we'd bowled well we would have won that game."

Turning to his own innings, he added: "I didn't strike it all that well for the first 20 balls or so.

"But then, as does happen in cricket, I got into that zone and felt like I could hit every ball.

"I guess those are the days where you've got to cash in and score some heavy runs," explained the 30-year-old, who added his relatively late development as a cricketer in the past two or three years meant he had never been approached by either South Africa or England.

Heavy defeats for Kenya and Canada in their openers appeared to give weight to the International Cricket Council's decision to reduce the World Cup to 10 teams in 2015, a move that could rule out participation by associate or second-tier nations such as the Netherlands.

But this latest example of Dutch courage -- ten Doeschate was in at the finish when the Netherlands beat England at Lord's in the World Twenty20 two years ago -- at least put the other side of the argument.

"We said at the start of the tournament we wanted to play brave cricket and this was a good example of that," said ten Doeschate, who has been signed up by the Indian Premier League.

Dutch captain Peter Borren saluted ten Doeschate's innings but lamented his side's bowling display.

"Ryan played probably the perfect knock but it still needs other guys to bat well. But we are capable of bowling better than that. If we bowled to our standards, 290 would have been enough." (AFP)