Cricket: Max O'Dowd creates history with an eye on the T20WC

Clydesdale Cricket Club, nestled away south of the river Clyde in a leafy neighborhood in Glasgow, barely attracts attention. Yet last month, it hosted a tri-nation T20I series featuring the Netherlands, Nepal and the hosts, Scotland, and produced record-breaking action.

The Dutch came out on top after contesting three nerve-wracking super-overs (extra time) in the second T20I against Nepal and defended 199 despite a bowler short against Scotland the next game.

There is never a bad time to hold your own and overturn tight games but with a spot at next year's T20 World Cup in sight at the European Qualifier at Voorburg this week, the Dutch chose wisely

“Can we play a bit of Afro house? Kedama?” That was Max O'Dowd, the Netherlands' opening batter, to the ground DJ while fielding at long-on.

He carries his own USB of playlists around and perhaps, it's little surprise that ever since the ICC's content team have caught wind of his appreciation of house music, there's not been a single World Cup without him having to field a question about his own DJ-ing skills.

“He's the character of our team,” Logan van Beek says about O'Dowd.

A quick scroll through his Instagram is enough to suggest so: mic'd up net sessions, Vikings -inspired long hair, coffee ASMRs, a serial Catan winner on tours and an obsession for spinning the discs.

On the field, it's hard not to swoon over the glorious cover drives, the straight lofted drives and not least, the slog sweeps all effortlessly executed from an open stance with his high hands, almost to the tune of a baseball batter. They have brought him the bulk of his runs and he now finds himself as the leading run-scorer in both the white-ball formats for the Dutch.

In fact, only India's Shubman Gill and Sri Lanka's Pathum Nissanka have scored more runs than O'Dowd's 2,008 since June 2020 while opening the batting in ODIs. His partnerships with Vikram Singh for close to three years, and now Michael Levitt, all average north of 42.

It was in Dundee he played his greatest hit: an unbeaten 158 off 130 balls as the Dutch pulled off the third-highest successful chase (370) in ODIs. His maiden century, and the highest score by a Dutch batter, helped avoid a winless Cricket World Cup League 2 leg, coming off three straight losses, and sealing two crucial points.

“I feel like Scotland wickets, there's a lot in it for the batters; flat, quick outfields. Throughout my career, I've had a mixture of wickets, and also just never really been able to convert those fifties into hundreds, which has obviously been very annoying, something I've wanted to do for a long time,” he told Dutch News on the sidelines in Glasgow.

Runs in the CWCL2 often come with little fanfare and often with the asterisk of coming off the blade of an Associate batter against a non-Test playing bowling attack, conveniently discarded from statistics on a major broadcast.

Dutch team sheets or squad announcements have rarely ever carried an official vice-captain but a quick glance around the room has always settled on O'Dowd, an obvious candidate. Across every major event in Dutch cricket over the past few years, there has been one recurring presence along Scott Edwards – O'Dowd.

It was little surprise he stepped up to captain the team in Edwards' injury-enforced absence in Dundee, even if for one game. He has long been a part of the team's brains trust, even being the 'paper man' during the 2023 ODI World Cup, famously Edwards' go-to in the field to refer to pre-match analysis work neatly tucked away in his back pocket.

He has often fronted up to address the media after a dire day out in the field, be it to make sense of the 44 all-out against Sri Lanka to cap off a winless 2021 T20 World Cup campaign or give a glowing endorsement of a teammate's knock despite his own lean run at the 2023 World Cup.

At 31, he still has his best years ahead of him and with a young group of players coming through in Levitt, Noah Croes, Zach Lion-Cachet and Kyle Klein, there is an inevitable tag of seniority around him now, not that he thinks of it as any more than just helping out his mates.

“I don't think too much has changed [in the past ten years]. I still try to play my game and play it the same way. And the responsibility is always on me as a batter, I want to try and pull the stump out at the end of the game.

“Obviously, having young guys in the team is great, because they add that energy and that flair, and hopefully, they can also think that they need to take the responsibility to score the runs, because one day it's going to be Vikram, one day it's going to be Zach or Scotty. One day it might be me.

“The essence of this Dutch team is that everyone can be a match winner on any given day.

“I'm so lucky to play with guys that I consider my mates,” O'Dowd added. “I've played in teams in the past where there's always one or two guys that you might not get along with, and that's really not the case for this team.

“We go for a coffee together, golf, whatever it may be. I feel like everyone just gels.”

Getting underway this week at Voorburg is the ICC Men's T20 World Cup Regional Qualifier with matches against Jersey, Scotland, Guernsey, and Italy with two teams progressing to the T20 World Cup in India and Sri Lanka next year.

From the squad that played in Glasgow, left-handed batter Vikramjit Singh and left-arm quick Ben Fletcher have been dropped while Vivian Kingma has been sidelined due to a hamstring injury he picked up in the third T20I and is expected to be out for at least four weeks.

Durham all-rounder Bas de Leede returns alongside Hidde Overdijk, Haagse CC's seam bowling all-rounder, who has been handed a T20I recall and is in line to add to his four caps, the last of which came in 2019.

Squad: Noah Croes, Daniel Doram, Aryan Dutt, Scott Edwards (C, WC), Kyle Klein, Ryan Klein, Bas de Leede, Michael Levitt, Zach Lion-Cachet, Paul van Meekeren, Roelof van der Merwe, Teja Nidamanuru, Max O'Dowd, Hidde Overdijk, and Saqib Zulfiqar.