Italy registered their maiden T20I win over Germany and went onto win all their matches in their tour of Netherlands, where they beat the host’s Development XI along with twin T20I victories over Germany.
Both Italy and Germany will be in action during the ICC Men’s T20 World Cup Europe regional finals in Jun 2019 in Guernsey and this series provided much needed preparations for both team’s to fine-tune their key areas ahead of the qualifiers.
Italy’s Bentota Perera became the first batsman to score a T20I half-century in the 2nd match of the day as he guided his team to victory, chasing 130 set by Germany. Rehman Abdul also got amongst the runs, as he scored 46 runs across both the matches, without getting dismissed.
Germany will provide a much tougher proposition in the qualifiers, as they will have the services of English county professionals (Ollie Rayner, Craig Meschede and Dieter Klien) for the Europe regional finals.
Brief Scores:
Netherlands Development XI 116/8 in 20 overs (Hidde Overdijk 39 n.o, Ben Cooper 17, Shameera Arachchige 2/12, Rakibul Hasan 1/7, Nicolas Maiolo 1/11, Gayashan Munasinghe 1/16, Jaspreet Singh 1/11) lost to Italy 117/2 in 13.1 overs (Bentota Perera 44, Nicolas Maiolo 30 n.o, Rehman Abdul 18 n.o, Manpreet Singh 18, Ben Cooper 1/21, Julian de Mey 1/26) by 8 wickets
(T20I) Germany 53 all out in 16 overs (Hamid Wardak 20 n.o, Michael Ross 4/15, Baljit Singh 2/3, Nicholas Maiolo 2/8, Rakibul Hasan 1/6) lost to Italy 57/3 in 8.4 overs (Bentota Perera 21, Rehman Abdul 18 n.o, Izatullah Dawlatzai 2/17) by 7 wickets
(T20I) Germany 130/6 in 20 overs (Sahir Naqash 38 n.o, Mudassar Muhammad 23, Vijay Kumar 21, Abdul-Shakoor Rahimzei 15 n.o, Nicolas Maiolo 2/13, Shameera Arachchige 2/15, Rakibul Hasan 2/20) lost to Italy 135/4 in 15.3 overs (Bentota Perera 68 n.o, Rehman Abdul 28 n.o, Hamid Wardak 2/8, Amir Mangal 1/17) by 6 wickets
