NATTHAKAN CHANTHAM HITS HUNDRED IN THAILAND WOMEN’S FIRST ODI

Netherlands Women have just arrived in Chiang Mai to face Thailand Women in four-match series in both ODI and T20I cricket. The first ODI is played at Royal Chiang Mai on Sunday 20th November starting at 10.00 am. This will be another important day in the history of Thailand cricket as Thailand Women have only recently been granted ODI status so this match against Netherlands will be their first official ODI.

The history of the two women’s teams has been very different. Netherlands Women played their first ODI way back in 1984 and even played in four Women’s World Cups from 1988 to 2000 and retained their ODI status until 2011 playing in three more World Cup qualifying competions before losing their status.

Thailand Women had hardly stated playing international cricket at that stage but they have become a force in T20 cricket as they won the Asian Qualifier for the first time in 2013 and have never looked back in the shorter format playing in the Women’s World T20 in Australia in 2020.

Thailand played their first 50-over international competition in 2017 when they reached the Women’s World Cup Qualifier in 2017 when Netherlands failed to make it but both teams reached the 2021 tournament held in Zimbabwe. It was a competition badly affected by covid but Thailand won three out of four matches while Netherlands lost both their matches.

Thailand women had beaten Zimbabw, Bangladesh and USA so they have a strong pedigree in 50-over cricket but the Qualifier was cancelled and the top eight seeds qualified for the World Cup in New Zealand and Bangladesh and Ireland were added to the expanded Women’s Championship.

At least Thailand now have an opportunity to play official 50-overs cricket for the first time and their strong top order batting and an array of spinners backed up by superb fielding should give them an advantage over Netherlands despite their long history in ODI cricket.

Netherlanads do have several players to look out for with captain Heather Siegers returning from injury but Sterre Kalis is one of the most talented young batters from any European nation and she has played a lot of top class cricket in England.

Some of the Netherlands team played in the Women’s T20 World Cup Qualifier held in Bangkok in 2015 including Babette de Leede and Robine Rijke as well as Siegers and Kalis and players from both teams took part in the Fairbreak Invitational with Chanida Sutthiruang a team-mate of Sterre Kalis.

Both the ODI series and T20I series will be played at the cricket ground at Royal Chiang Mai Golf Resort. A lot of work has been carried out on the ground as it now has a large boundary and a new square with four hard pitches which will hopefully see some good competitive cricket.

The four ODIs are played on 20th, 22nd, 24th, 26th November while the four T20Is are played on 29th, 30th November, 2nd, 3rd December. All the matches are important as they will contribute to the two teams’ world rankings which will help them qualify for future tournaments