Nepal's Dallas diaspora and the sound of passionate silence

There are an estimated 15,000 Nepalis living in Dallas and there was room for less than half of them at the Grand Prairie Stadium, but they turned up to form a sea of blue and red and staged some of the eeriest silences the tournament has heard. Don't get this wrong: there was cheering and lots of it, and there happy smiles and handwritten signs expressing pride in the Nepal national cricket team, but when Kushal Bhurtel was given out lbw in the fourth over, or when Max O'Dowd hit the six that put the Dutch the three runs away from the win, the sound was sucked out of the arena like a vacuum.

Think back to the Ahmedabad crowd at the ODI World Cup final and imagine a similar passion a world away, among a much smaller group of people with seemingly much lower stakes. Or not. This is only their team's opening game of the tournament, but it is perhaps the most important. Of the sides they would face in Group D - among them South Africa, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh - Netherlands and Nepal would have looked at each other and identified the opposition they must beat to stay relevant in the event. And unlike Amstelveen, Rotterdam or Kirtipur, where they have met most often in the past, they would have to do so in almost completely unknown conditions.

All they had to go on was the tournament opener two days ago, which was high-scoring and saw the USA chase down 195 inside 18 overs against Canada. Only eight wickets fell in that game, and just six to the bowlers, and the weather was different this morning so perhaps that match was not a good measure of what to expect, especially today. There was early rain on Tuesday, and the match was delayed by 30 minutes, Netherlands got "a bit of a read of the wicket," as Scott Edwards said at the post-match presentation, and the bowlers responded beautifully.

Vivian Kingma found swing straight away and bowled his full quota of overs upfront, albeit with no reward. What he did, though, was sow the doubt in the Nepal batters' minds that the bowlers at the other end could reap benefit from. Tim Pringle, the left-arm spinner, flighted the final ball of his opening over, Aasif Sheikh tried to make room and got a thick edge to short third. Pringle got a second in the over after Kingma finished when Anil Sah fetched a delivery from outside off to sweep and top-edged. By then, Logan van Beek had already removed Bhurtel and there had been three stunned silences.