Toss Netherlands choose to bowl vs Nepal

Netherlands captain Scott Edwards won the toss and had no hesitation in bowling against Nepal in the teams' opening game of the T20 World Cup 2024 in Grand Prairie. Early-morning rain and bad light delayed the toss by half an hour, but once the rain cleared, things started moving quickly and the forecast for the rest of the morning looks fine.

Edwards expected the ball to swing early with the heavy overhead conditions in place. Netherlands went in with three fast bowlers in Paul van Meekeren, Vivian Kingma and Logan van Beek, while Tim Pringle will take care of the spinning duties. Bas de Leede and Sybrand Engelbrecht slotted in as allrounders. They have Max O'Dowd and Michael Levitt up top, with Vikramjit Singh likely to come in at No. 3.

For Nepal, this is the first appearance at the T20 World Cup in a decade. They last played in the tournament in 2014 where they won two games and lost one and fell short of a Super 10s spot on net run rate. Captain Rohit Paudel said he wasn't bothered that the toss did not go their way but wanted to put up a good total.

Netherlands also have played at the T20 World Cup before, most recently in 2022, where they beat South Africa and denied them a spot in the semi-final.

Pitch No. 6 is being used for this game as opposed to pitch No. 4 which was used for the opening game here between USA and Canada.

Nepal: 1 Kushal Bhurtel, 2 Aasif Sheikh (wk), 3 Anil Sah, 4 Kushal Malla, 5 Rohit Paudel (capt), 6 Dipendra Singh Airee, 7 Gulsan Jha, 8 Sompal Kami, 9 Karan KC, 10 Sagar Dhakal, 11 Abinash Bohara

Netherlands: 1 Max O'Dowd, 2 Michael Levitt, 3 Vikramjit Singh, 4 Scott Edwards (capt & wk), 5 Teja Nidamanuru, 6 Bas de Leede, 7 Sybrand Engelbrecht, 8 Logan van Beek, 9 Tim Pringle, 10 Paul van Meekeren, 11 Vivian Kingma