Morgan and Mott target white-ball success for England in Netherlands

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Alec Stewart’s memories of England’s tour of the Netherlands in the summer of 1989 are a little hazy. He was only 26, full of anticipation for his cricket career ahead and yet to make his full England debut.

“It definitely didn’t feel like playing for England, it didn’t even have the feel of playing for a Lions or an A team,” he says. “We were only there for a few days and played on matting wickets and I’d never played a game on matting in my life. We were captained by Peter Roebuck, and I have to say he didn’t leave a mark on me. I remember him saying “it doesn’t matter” after we lost a game and I found that very strange – it always matters whether you win or lose.”

It definitely mattered to the newspapers back home. England’s defeat in that first game did not go down well in a summer where the Test team were losing the Ashes 4-0 in chaotic style, plucking 29 players out of a constantly whirling cement mixer as Australia doggedly stuck to 12 men. “And so yesterday it finally happened: the worst really did come to the worst,” thundered Matthew Engel in the Guardian. “The England cricket team lost by three runs to Holland. I repeat, Holland.”

“These were the golden boys. This team … comprised precisely those youngsters whom everyone is imploring Ted Dexter to pick in place of the whipped and sour cream of English cricket.”

Re-booted Team England TM won’t make that mistake again, in a trip delayed from 2021 because of Covid. Although shorn of its multi-format players, currently making whoopee in the Test series against New Zealand,