Bertus de Jong & Rod Lyall 12/06/2025
Two double weekends back-to-back have seen us hare past the half-way point of the season, and while there’s plenty still to play for, by this time next week most sides will likely know whether they’re headed for a championship challenge or a relegation battle. This Saturday’s round pits the top half of the table against the bottom, and if the outcome goes on first-half form there will be five sides aspiring for the top spot and five left concentrating their attention down towards a looming relegation risk.
BdJ: Among the sides already battling to avoid a stint in the Hoofdklasse are VOC Rotterdam, who will have taken heart (along with four points) from last week’s efforts, tripling their points for the season with wins over VRA and frontrunners Kampong. They face almost as stern a challenge when they welcome third-placed Voorburg CC to Hazelaarweg on Saturday, though once again the Bloodhounds are fortunate in the scheduling. Whether they like it or not (and one suspects not) the Dutch national team are still stuck in Scotland for the time being, meaning VCC will be without Levitt, Kingma and skipper Croes on Saturday – bringing the total opposing players avoided by VOC in the week to nine (or ten if one includes VRA’s Patrick Gouge, who was away with Jersey last Saturday). Voorburg have a deeper bench than Kampong or VRA at the minute though, and though they went down to Kampong in a shortened match last Saturday, the weather forecast is likely to play to their advantage this weekend. Dropping Gavin Kaplan down the order and promoting Carl Mumba to open proved a smart gambit on Monday, taking some of the sting out of the threat of Aaditt Jain and the new ball and shoring up the middle order in the absence of Croes. While VCC are unlikely to pile up the sort of score they put on VOC at full strength earlier in the season, it’s hard to imagine they’d need to. While VOC have at times impressed with the ball, they’ve yet to chase a score north of 200 and indeed have only passed the milestone once thus far.
RL: If you take out Scott Janett, Christiaan Oberholzer and Monty Singh, the rest of the VOC top six are collectively averaging under 11 with the bat, and that includes one knock of 71 by Jason van der Meulen against HCC. In other words, it’s the consistent failure of the batting, already a problem last season, which has left VOC battling to stay up, and it’s a problem to which there’s no immediately obvious solution. The club’s Seconds are in the lower half of the Eerste Klasse, none of the batters making an insistent case for promotion. That leaves the attack, spearheaded by the youngsters Aaditt Jain and Roman Harhangi, to carry an almost impossible load, although last weekend’s results suggest that their efforts could yet bring redemption. A strong youth policy and some smart horse-trading have yielded Voorburg untold riches by comparison, Cedric de Lange’s 378 runs at 47.25 the clearest illustration of the former factor. Boosted by the return to fitness of Ryan Klein, Voorburg are poised to mount a challenge for the title they last won in 2023, and for that to happen this is a must-win for them.
BdJ: Another side that may take some encouragement from the surprise result at Hazelaarweg last week are Excelsior ‘20, with the sheen of invulnerability rather rubbed off of Kampong, who they will take on at Utrecht on Saturday. Yet that result hardly improved Excelsior’s position on the table, and while the frontrunners will still be without Scott Edwards and Max O’Dowd, and doubtless perturbed by the precedent of their loss to VOC, the lion’s share of the pressure on Saturday will be on the Schiedammers, whose loss to VRA on Monday has left them staring down the barrel. Nor have Excelsior been at full strength through the middle phase, with a hamstring issue keeping their star bat Raynard van Tonder carrying drinks for the last couple of games. Skipper Roel Verhagen stepped up admirably against VRA in his absence, but without more support from the rest of the batting card the outcome on Saturday is likely to be the same. As VOC demonstrated, early wickets are key to containing Kampong’s top order, and Excelsior spearhead Jason Ralston has yet to rediscover the form that made him last season’s lead wicket-taker. Conversely Joost Kroesen’s legspin has become a reliable source of wickets for his side, and Antum Naqvi has made a decent fist of shouldering the responsibility of two overseas, but to take a win home on Saturday will likely require more of Excelsior’s line up to fire at once than they have managed so far this season.
RL: Having been reduced to 10 for three, 49 for four and 38 for three in their last three outings, Kampong will be well aware that they need to build stronger foundations if they are to avoid putting undue pressure on Lorenzo Ingram and the lower middle order, although Pierre Jacod’s efforts with both ball and bat have been among the most encouraging features of their season so far. Excelsior do have the bowling resources to test the leaders’ aggressive strategy in the initial powerplay, even if Ralston has not been the force he was last season. Conversely, the Schiedammers’ form with the bat has also been somewhat hit-and-miss, Verhagen’s solo effort on Monday a clear illustration of the problem. The yawning gap between the performances of the Topklasse’s 35-plus overseas players and most of the locals continues to widen, and apart from some notable exceptions like De Lange and Jacod it’s an issue that must be addressed. That said, Kampong have more Dutch-produced players capable of holding their own in the Topklasse than most of their rivals, and that may prove to be the difference here.
BdJ: Still three points adrift of incumbents Kampong, erstwhile frontrunners Hermes DVS will be in the odd position of cheering on local rivals Excelsior, even as they busy themselves with the more immediate task of taking two points home from their trip to HBS Craeyenhout. It’s been Hermes’ enviable bowling line-up that saw them make the early running, and even without Aryan Dutt facing the Sky-blue attack will be a worrying prospect for HBS, especially without Wesley Barresi and Kyle Klein. Without question the overriding concern for the Crows, however, will be how to remove the prolific Daniel Doyle-Calle at the top of the Hermes batting order. When Doyle’s been absent or out the Sky-blues have struggled to compile any sort of score, even if they’ve shown themselves capable of defending sub-200 totals more often than not. Getting the Spanish captain early, one would think, is thus a necessary but not sufficient condition for an HBS victory come Saturday.
RL: Now just two points ahead of Excelsior and VOC, HBS are in some danger of slipping into the danger zone, and really need to win games like this in order to stay out of trouble. But again, in the absence of the dependable Barresi the batting is too dependent on Tayo Walbrugh and Lehan Botha, as the collapse against Punjab on Monday clearly demonstrated. Hermes’ combination of the seam of the brothers Elenbaas (who have seemingly slipped into Box-and-Cox mode), Sebastiaan Braat and the easy-to-underestimate Roy Numair, with the spin of Hikmatullah Jabarkhail and Sahil Kothari will likely test their opponents’ line-up to the full, and will need to do so if too great a burden is not to be imposed on their own fragile batting. But a win here is no less crucial for the Sky-blues, who have lost three of their last four games and will be painfully aware of the pursuers breathing down their necks.
BdJ: For fourth-placed HCC it would likely take a catastrophic return to first-game form for them to drop points the beleaguered Sparta 1888, who they take on at de Diepput on Saturday. While the HCC batting has looked vulnerable whenever Boris Gorlee fails at three, the HCC skipper will be back on his home astro again this week and, as has been repeatedly noted in these pages, there’s no better bat on a mat. Meanwhile the early season fight that saw the Sparta struggle to semi-competitive scores at the start of the season seems to have been beaten out of them, the Spartans not having passed 200 since round four. Coming up against season lead wicket-taker Hidde Overdijk, it would take a remarkable reversal for Martijn Snoep’s side to take anything but hard lessons back to Bermweg.
RL: Now two games adrift of their nearest rivals at the foot of the table, Sparta are not yet at the Point of No Return, but it has definitely become visible on the horizon. Apart from their three principal overseas, only Ahsan Malik, pressed into service at first-wicket down, averages better than 15 with the bat, and even his cutting edge with the new ball can’t disguise the limitations of an honest but far-from-menacing attack. HCC, for all their occasional fitfulness, look much stronger in all departments, and like Voorburg and Punjab, they have created a launching-pad from which they could potentially take advantage of any further lapses by the top two. It’s true that after dominating with the ball they struggled a bit to beat Hermes on Monday, but even that eventual victory illustrated the depth of their batting and their resilience when things get tough. Five of the current side were in the team which came from behind to take the title in 2022, and there’s no question that that experience stands them in good stead on such occasions as that.
BdJ: And finally, after a long absence, and a day behind the rest of the round, Topklasse cricket returns to the Bos on Sunday, though it finds hosts VRA in a rather less comfortable position than when last they played a home game. Still short fully four Dutch internationals, VRA face the prospect of taking on a full strength and finally (if fitfully) firing Punjab Rotterdam, who’ve strung a series of wins together as their title defence belatedly got into gear over the past couple of weeks. A crucial win over relegation rivals Excelsior on Monday meant stand-in VRA skipper Johan Smal will have at least two points to present the returning internationals when they get back from Scotland, but he’d likely like a couple more to cheer up his clubmates when they get back from what’s shaping up to be a less-than-triumphant tour. While Smal has done his best to marshal the diminished and diminishing resources available to him, one suspects he may be regarding the team-sheet handed in by opposite number Sikander Zulfiqar with a degree of envy on Sunday.
RL: This match-up of fifth and sixth on the current table is crucial for both sides, and that makes it pretty clearly the Match of the Day. From one angle it looks like an ordinary mid-table clash, but so crowded is that central space and so narrow the margins between safety and a battle to stay up that these points take on much greater significance than that. For Punjab, too, there is the knowledge that a really successful sprint to the finishing-line, combined with the right results elsewhere, could yet see them in the mix for the title. Three of their batters are among the dozen who have posted centuries this season, Musa Ahmad the latest to join that company, and the return of Saqib Zulfiqar reinforces the strength of a spin department which has taken over from the seamers as the side’s principal weapon in the field. For the home side, the addition of Sharad Hake and Viraj Thakur to the seam unit and Ashir Abid’s stepping up with the new ball proved vital in the victory over Excelsior, and if the batting remains an uncertain force in the absence of the internationals there’s enough quality there to set or chase a decent total. Another tough one to pick, this.
BdJ’s picks: Voorburg, Kampong, Hermes, HCC, Punjab.
RL’s picks: Voorburg, Kampong, HBS, HCC, Punjab.
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