Rod Lyall 12/04/2025
No club, perhaps, has undergone as great a transformation over the winter as Sparta 1888, who may find themselves facing an even sharper battle than usual against a return to the Hoofdklasse.
Last year’s leading overseas, Riley Mudford, is not returning, while Will Clarke has moved to Kent club side Bromley and Cameron Fraser, who took 29 wickets last year, has also departed.
Among local players, Faizan Bashir has moved to lower-division club Royal Punjab, and Sandeep Sardha has decided to call it a day.
On the credit side, the Capelle club has signed 30-year-old South African Kyle Klesse and 18-year-old Australian Lukas Boorer; both are wicketkeepers and hence may be vying for Mudford’s place behind the stumps, but Boorer in particular has had a great season with Tuggeranog Valley in the ACT League, including a recent, unbeaten 111 against Western District, and both are likely to command a place in Sparta’s all-too-often fragile top order.
They will also continue to enjoy the services of New Zealander Sam Ferguson, back for a third season, and South African Juandre Scheepers, who topped the side’s run-scoring last year with 419 at 52.38 as well as bowling some useful spells.
Ferguson, moreover, will be joined by elder brother Tim, since both are now living and working in the Netherlands.
Having greatly missed former internationals Mudassar Bukhari and Ahsan Malik from the attack last season, skipper Joost-Martijn Snoep is delighted at the prospect of Malik being more regularly available this time round.
His ability to claim early wickets will add cutting power to a pace attack which also includes Snoep himself, who has now claimed 105 Topklasse wickets at a very respectable 21.92, and the dangerous Khalid Ahmadi, not to mention brothers Max and Tom Hoornweg.
Spin will again be provided by Umar Baker and Manminder Singh, both useful lower-order batters into the bargain.
It is, however, the batting which has often been Sparta’s Achilles heel in the past, and Snoep will be looking for more substantial contributions from Shaquille Martina and young Prithvi Balwantsingh.
Snoep remains optimistic: ‘There’s no team we can’t beat on our day,’ he says, ‘and we’re going to try to win every game.
‘If we play a whole season of good cricket and end up in the bottom two or three or whatever it is now, we’ll be at peace with that.’
VOC Rotterdam similarlycontinue to be something of an enigma, a team which consistently contrives to be less than the sum of its parts.
Compensating for the loss of Edwards and O’Dowd last year by signing four overseas players, they again failed to make it into the top six, although their overseas foursome did top their batting averages and they were handicapped to a degree by a mid-season injury to allrounder Jock McKenzie.
Of the four, only Dutch passport holder Jason van der Meulen is back this season, and he will be looking to build on a promising first season with the club.
He will be joined by 21-year-old New Zealander Scott Janett, who has just broken into the Canterbury side, and the South African Christiaan Oberholzer, who had an outstanding season with Walton on Thames in the Surrey Championship last year.
Both bat right-handed and are leg-break exponents, so the Bloodhounds will be looking to their local talent to supply an effective seam attack.
They will hope for further progress from Aaditt Jain, still only 17, and Roman Harhangi, both of whom did enough last year to suggest that they are genuine prospects, Harhangi’s 5-33 against Sparta one of the side’s best performances of the season.
The two youngsters were well backed up by the veteran Jelte Schoonheim, who has the knack of breaking partnerships as well as playing useful knocks in the lower middle order, while spin is again provided by Aadditt Jain’s elder brother Arnav, just back from captaining the European Under-23 side at Lord’s, Asief Hoseinbaks, last season’s leading wicket-taker for the Bloodhounds, and Ramdas Upadhyaya.
But with Janett and Oberholzer both purveying their leg-spin, skipper Tim de Kok will not be short of options once the shine has gone off the ball.
As with Sparta, though, the real need is for more consistency from the locally-based batters, and De Kok, who had a very disappointing season by his standards, will be looking to raise his own game as well as hoping for more regular contributions from opener Francois Fourie.
Coach Pierce Fletcher, joined this year by former international Stephan Myburgh, also has a cohort of other players he can draw on, including Mussayab Jamil, who showed some promise in his limited opportunities last season, Rohan Malik, and back-up opener Pieter Recordon.
There is no question that if they can put it all together VOC have the potential to move well clear of those two or three relegation spots.
TKcricket 