Noorderling29

Looking at the draw,, I was convinced that we could get to the semi-final, to then be hammered by the top teams. The GS matches were pretty awful, the QF against Bulgaria was much better. The matches Friday and today seem to suggest that the team is much better than expected.

As I stated yesterday, baseball is played in schools, cricket is not. There are several Dutch/Antillian players in the Major Leagues, whose results are reported whereas cricketers are unknown. Baseball gets airtime, cricket very little.

NL is much more a baseball than a cricket country. Baseball is played in school and gets significant attention on TV. Cricket gets little attention; even the recent good results only merit perhaps a 45 second item in a sports program. I seriously doubt many people in this country are aware of or even care about the results of the national Cricket team.

Seems very unlikely that European countries outside UK and Ireland would chose cricket over Baseball. Both are minority sports, but Baseball seems the more popular on the continent

Against France the result was 3 - 1 and we could easily have lost more sets against weak opposition. We were helped enormously by a very favorable draw, compared for instance to Belgium. Partly the result of course of finishing 4th two years ago (while IIRC Belgium failed to qualify for the knock out fase). by far our best and most stabile match was against the on paper strongest opponent. The semi finale will show if this was the result of our high level, as the TV commentator stated, or, as I suspect, the weakness of Bulgaria who seemed to not cope with the pressure. ‘Friday will tell.

Amen to that…

Yes, we know, because she released a statement to that effect.

Germany has a much larger population than France and one might assume much more athletes to monitor. But the French and German budgets are apparantly comparable.

If there’s time left between the races and the irritating conversations with mr. Sedoc.

And the new commentator NOS uses for field events is atrocious. He has no technical knowledge and just spends the whole time spewing platitudes, combined with faux enthousiasm. He is really unlistenable as he was commentating on the Tour de France and earlier short track skating. I usually watch Eurosport, and switch channels (belgian, British and occasionally Dutch) when Eurosport goes to commercials or does one of those cringe level interviews.

It looks like you forgot to award Emma Oosterwegel’s points to the Dutch tally.

Given the relative strengths of the teams, Germany had to bring their A-game to the second round to have a chance to ride for bronze. I don’t see them delivering a faster time in a third ride. NL and AUS did not need to post their fastest time in the second round. If based on the times in the second round you want to believe that Germany is closer to the two top teams, no one can stop you.

According to AD newspaper, they indeed predict Van Vleuten winning two medals.apparently their policy is to only discard athletes that have actually quit, not those that have only announced they will do so. 41 medals is not impossible, but very very unlikely. Everything will have to go our way to achieve that goal.

Decisions have consequences. She is entitled to follow her own reasoning and ignore the decision of the national federation. The federation subsequently is wholly in its right to remove her from the team and cut her financing. What signal would they give to other athletes: that it’s OK to ignore the federation at your convenience, and suffer no negative consequences?

Fortunately Ukraine aren’t in our group. except from Poland, we could defeat every team in the group, but could also lose almost every match.

Same here, unlikely that any of the Dutch team qualify, but not beyond the realm of imagination

The Dutch federation has kicked Megan de Cler out of the national team.

Guidetti used to coach the Dutch women’s team

I would be very surprised if NL were to beat SL, but stranger things have happened at sea

My post was based on the mistaken assumption that two teams would qualify

Again a Dutch victory, after batting second. A small defeat against Sri Lanka in the third match should suffice.

And had a bloody hard time doing that, against the weakest opponent in the group.

The Dutch team batted second.

It seems a majority of Ukrainians see things a little differently.

Referendum in Tibet and Hong Kong?