The decision of the Netherlands team to replace Tim Gruijtens with Tom Cooper owing to a ‘back injury’ has snowballed into a major controversy with the former claiming that he was rather ‘forced’ to withdraw from the squad for the ICC World T20 in Bangladesh.
To add fuel to the fire, Gruijtens has released a video on You Tube which shows him speaking as to how he was ‘bullied’ into withdrawing from the main team and also revealed that he had no injuries as to warrant his exclusion, reports foxsports.
Apart from his ‘revealation’ Gruijtens has also called the Netherlands’ coaching system as a ‘sham’ and said that it went against the ‘spirit of the game’.
“Hello, my name is Timothy Gruijtens. I would have played for the Dutch cricket team had it not been for the fact that the Dutch coaching staff decided to bend the rules, act against the spirit of cricket, and basically cheat,” says Gruijtens in the video.
Gruijtens further added that the decision to include Coopers was only taken after the latter’s club side South Australia was out of the race to reach the Sheffield Shield final thanks to a defeat to Tasmania.
Coopers has played more than 30 games for the Netherlands and if things are anything to go by then he has been unnecessarily been dragged into the controversy which will definitely affect Dutch cricket.
The highlight of his Sheffield Shield season was the 175 against Queensland which underlined his credentials to represent the Dutch.
Also Gruijtens reveals that he was dragged into undergoing a back scan which he feels would have worked against him given his long history of back problems.
Nevertheless Gruijtens is massively disappointed at not being included in the squad and would have definitely hoped to feature against opposition like Ireland, Zimbabwe and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
Despite venting his frustrations at the Dutch cricket officials, Gruijtens maintained that Cooper was a better batsman than himself and said that he did not speak anything against the player in the video.
The video will come as a blow for Dutch cricket especially since they lost their One-Day International (ODI) status in 2013 which led to the sacking of the head coach Peter Drinnen.
For the record the Netherlands beat Ireland by six-wickets in their Group B qualifying fixture and progressed to the Super 10s stages.
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