NAGPUR: Ryan ten Doeschate's man-of-the-match performance in the Netherlands' narrow World Cup loss to England wasn't enough to satisfy the allrounder.

The 30-year-old allrounder, who will probably never make another World Cup following the International Cricket Council's decision to trim the competition to 10 teams from 2015, wishes he had pushed for an even bigger score.

"That was about as close to a perfect innings as I'm going to play in one-day cricket," Ten Doeschate said. "We maybe got our pace a little bit wrong. We set our marker at 270 and maybe if we'd have gone a little bit harder at it we could have got 310 maybe, something like that.

"When you come across a deck like that and you get a big team on the back foot, maybe you've got to get your foot on the gas."

But Ten Doeschate's 110-ball 119 still gave the Netherlands a chance of a famous upset in Nagpur and hinted that maybe his native South Africa and his sometime home of England had erred by not approaching him to play for them.

The ICC Associate and Affiliate Player of the Year for 2010, Ten Doeschate also took two wickets to keep England pegged back as it chased a surprisingly big Dutch total of 292-6.

Still, Ten Doeschate isn't sore that he was overlooked for test-match action by the major cricketing nations. He is just trying to make the most of a late flourish to a career that took him to English county cricket with Essex and will soon feature an appearance in the lucrative Indian Premier League.

"I've developed quite late as a cricketer," Ten Doeschate said. "I'm 30 already and I've probably only played some pretty decent cricket for the last two or three years. Unfortunately, there was never a path for me there to take.

"I've played for Holland, playing in two World cups and a Twenty20 World Cup, so it's not something that is on my agenda."

For now, it's all about making the most of the chances he does have.

Few predicted he could have got such a chance against England, but a good batting track and some wayward English bowling and fielding meant he surpassed his previous one-day best of 109 not out — a total he had managed against both lowly Bermuda and Kenya.

"I've struggled for the last six weeks or so but this has been a good week for me in terms of preparation with the batting coaches," Ten Doeschate said. "I didn't strike that well for the first 20 balls or so, it was quite difficult to get it away.

"But as does happen in cricket, I got into that zone where you feel you can hit every ball and those are the days when you just have to cash in and score some heavy runs."

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