Vadiraj Kanakagiri

Group stages are nothing but knockouts. If you had one bad day, your hopes of the world cup are thrown out of the window. There's almost no turning back.

The Netherlands didn't have a bad day, to be honest. Not even a bad inning. But they just had one bad over. It wasn't just bad. It was worse. It was awful. It was torturous. But not for Ireland and Curtis Campher.

Campher had bowled the over of his life. In this dream over, which is the tenth of the innings, Campher didn't just pick up a hat-trick, he did one better - he picked up 4 wickets in four consecutive deliveries and etched his name in the record books. He joined the list of some elite people, Lasith Malinga and Rashid Khan.

After a solid start of 52 for 2 in 9, Netherlands folded for a miserly 106. 'The Associate's Legend', if we could call him that, Ryan Ten Doeschate, is in his early forties. One could sense that this might be his last world cup and he would've committed himself into playing this after a lot of contemplation regarding his fitness. But it was so disappointing to see him go out for a first-ball duck, en route Curtis Campher's dreamy four deliveries.

Chasing an easy target, the Irish men didn't have much trouble as their stalwart Paul Stirling stayed at the crease till the end and allowed others to go for it. They reached the target with 29 deliveries left and almost booked their place in the super 12s.

Brief Scores: Netherlands 106 all out in 20 overs (O'Dowd 51; Campher 4-26) lost to Ireland 107/3 in 15.1 overs (Delany 44, Stirling 30*) by seven wickets