Bertus de Jong | 23-04-2026
The KNCB’s new player-points system for the Topklasse, Hoofdklasse and Eersteklasse is a welcome and arguably overdue effort to address long-standing problems in Dutch club cricket and may yet prove a model going forward, but the slapdash formulations and nonsensical categorisations set out in the new rules risk rendering it unfit for purpose. The board will need to rely on the collaboration and indulgence of clubs to make the half-baked system work, and if it proves a source of rancour, the KNCB will have only themselves to blame.
The question of regulating the participation of overseas players in domestic competition has been a perennial source of controversy and contention in Dutch cricket over the past decade at least, with past efforts to place limits on squad or team composition foundering in the face of opposition, loopholing, and even legal challenge. The board’s new player-points based approach (modelled on systems used in Australian club cricket) has much to recommend it in principle, but the final language of the regulations, which were circulated to clubs two months ago, is so vague, contradictory or perverse as to risk generating still more controversy and conflict, such that it will require a concerted and collaborative effort from all parties to avoid their implementation derailing the coming season entirely.
The new system seeks to allocate each player a points-value dependent on their national origin and level of prior cricket experience, with progressive reductions based on length of service to their current club, and then places a cap on the total points-value of a side that may be fielded in any given match. In the manual for the new system, a first draft of which was circulated late last year, the KNCB lays out the main aims:
Local Player Development—Encouraging clubs to invest in homegrown players and provide them with opportunities at the highest level.
Reducing Dependence on Overseas Players—Balancing the use of international talent with the development of Dutch players, so clubs don’t rely solely on overseas signings.
In short, the system is designed to reward clubs that develop Dutch talent while still allowing space for international players to contribute to the competition.
There are reasonable arguments to be made against the system even in principle; implicit penalties for players transferring between clubs systemically weakens the hands of cricketers vis-a-vis clubs and militates against professionalisation. As written, the rules could be seen as exacerbating the particular problem of player retention after school age, when youngsters moving away from from their home towns (and clubs) for work or study often drop cricket altogether. The system also risks undermining the policy of encouraging Netherlands-eligible players who learned their cricket abroad to play in the Dutch competition if they wish to be considered for national selection, and arguably does too little to incentivise clubs to attract or develop players likely to be called up for national selection given the ever-increasing burden the international calendar places on player availability.
Yet these are ultimately trade-offs which must be made, and debates where reasonable disagreements are inevitable. In truth, there appears to be broad consensus that a system of this sort is needed, and the model which the board has adopted ought to be sufficiently flexible to meet the needs of the club competitions that have served as the game’s foundation in the Netherlands. The Topklasse has a history stretching back well over a century. By most metrics it is the oldest extant club cricket competition in the world, and indeed it predates the Netherlands’ participation in international cricket by almost half a century. Many in Dutch cricket (including this publication) consequently regard the integrity of the club competition per se as taking precedence over its role as a production line or feeder league for the national team, a role for which it is not necessarily well-suited, and which one might hope an expanded Pro-Series may one day fulfil (on which more another time).
There are clear upsides to limiting the number of overseas players in the Topklasse; not least lessening the financial burden on clubs imposed by the ballooning expense of maintaining a competitive squad in the upper divisions. The system also rewards sides whose youth systems develop young players, and to encourages them to blood such players in the top flight. The points-based approach also affords clubs a degree of flexibility in selection, while the option to introduce bonus points allocations in future seasons for clubs that provide umpires, field women’s and youth teams or the like might also allow the KNCB to incentivise such objectives in a more flexible manner than hard and fast regulation. The board is ultimately answerable to the clubs on such questions, and it’s excusable, given that the preponderance of input has come from club administrators rather than active players, that the basic framework of the rules favours the former over the latter. What less excusable, however, is just how incredibly sloppy the final document is in its definitions and categorisations.
The definitions and category descriptions provided, along with the pair of flow charts intended as guidance, make a series of assertions and implicit assumptions which are by turns contradictory, plainly mistaken, or nonsensical – and some of which would appear to mandate distinctions on the basis of nationality which serve no obvious developmental or competitive purpose and risk running afoul of Dutch anti-discrimination or privacy law.
The KNCB has to date provided no rationale for discriminating between EU passport-holders and players of other nationalities, a distinction which the provided flowcharts imply to be prior to any other question. There is of course a clear rationale for giving preference to players who are eligible for the Dutch national team, but no explanation is given as to why it is desirable to treat other European nationals differently to players from further afield. It cannot simply be deference to EU law, as Dutch (eligible) players are still being privileged over other EU citizens. And it’s worth remembering of course that it was not the application of EU law that saw the previous restrictions on overseas players tossed out, but rather the Dutch Algemene Wet Gelijke Behandeling, which precludes any discrimination on the basis of nationality whatsoever.
The inclusion of this EU/non-EU distinction thus seems to be not only confusing and pointless, but also prima facie illegal. In the wider cricket world the question of a player’s legal nationality is generally treated as secondary to their affiliation to (and eligibility to represent) a given ICC member board, the two obviously being not entirely unrelated but certainly not identical. The KNCB’s departure from this norm is both inexplicable and problematic – potentially legally and certainly practically.
The needless distinction on the basis of nationality rather than eligibility leads to a number of perverse or contradictory outcomes if one were to follow the plain meaning of the document. The most glaring of these stems from an apparent misunderstanding of ICC eligibility criteria, which leads the authors of the document to assume any Dutch-eligible player must also be in possession of an EU passport. This is not the case. Any player who has been resident in the country for three years is eligible to represent the Netherlands even if they hold no EU passport – a category which in fact covers a huge swathe of those playing in the Netherlands, including at least one current Dutch international – yet the rules (which incorrectly treat Dutch-eligible players as a subset of EU nationals) makes no provision for such players.
Other categorisations are equally slipshod. A brief mention is made of “Representative U19s Competitions” but no clarification is offered as to how these are to be defined. One might guess the intended meaning is international under 19s cricket, but it is unclear whether this is meant to include only Youth ODIs, Youth Tests and Youth T20I, or any Under 19 team representing an ICC member. The rules then state any foreign Under 19 player should be classified as “international,” a plain reading of which would mean that a player that’s turned out for, say, Namibia Under19s at an African regional qualifier would attract a higher points value than one who has played Country Cricket or even IPL – a decision which, if intentional, would bespeak a remarkable unfamiliarity with the actual standard of cricket of these competitions.
Conversely a careful definition of “Expat Payer” [sic] is laid out, complete with onerous requirements for proof of employment or study. Aside from the fact that, as one captain observed, “it’s a bit much to expect a casual cricketer to throw his whole employment contract on the table,” one imagines these requirements will run afoul of all manner of privacy laws. The rules governing “expats” moreover make no provision for players not in full time paid work or study, thus excluding asylees, care-givers, home-makers, dependent minors and such, again without explanation. Equally inexplicably, the category is seemingly applicable only to non-EU players, but then given the provision that non-homegrown players must always be placed in the category attracting the highest points allocation, a plain reading of the rules renders the entire class of “Expat” functionally redundant anyway, which is perhaps for the best.
The second-highest tier is titled “1st Class & List A”, but restricts that category to Full Members. Premier and franchise cricket outside of Test-playing countries thus fall outside either category, presumably meaning that Major League Cricket or the ILT20 (both of which have List A status) nonetheless fall into the same category as a pub league in the UK. The next tier down is something called “Provincial A team cricket” a term used throughout the document as if it were a globally recognised category of cricket, which it is not, an oversight which once again one can only assume is rooted in an extraordinarily broad ignorance of what the game outside of the Netherlands actually looks like. Whether, for example, National Counties cricket in the UK, or the Breakout League in the West Indies fall into this category cannot be discerned from the text other than by (ultimately subjective) reasoning by analogy.
It would have been comparatively trivial to supply category definitions which comported more closely with objective reality, ideally supported by a tiered list of foreign competitions ahead of time. Instead it seems likely that such questions will be left to the discretion of an ad-hoc arbitration committee. It is to be hoped said committee boasts greater expertise than apparently went into the creation of the regulations it is tasked with applying, and that clubs accept its rulings with equanimity. So far, at least, they appear to be doing so.
Yet relying on case-by-case committee decisions to flesh out the details that the rules fail to provide – a strategy which might be charitably labelled a “Common Law” (or less charitably a “vibes-based”) approach – will inevitably leave the KNCB open to allegations of bad faith or bias the moment a difficult dispute arises, as the slapdash manner in which the rules have been written all but guarantees, or lead to conflicting and contradictory standards should the committee’s rulings not be made with considerably more care and expertise than is evident in the authorship of the regulations themselves. To mangle the old adage, Bad Law makes Hard Cases, and Hard Cases make Bad Law.
It is of course too late to change the rules at this stage, the KNCB having waved off the questions and concerns of informed third parties (including your correspondent) for some months. We thus left hoping that the community pulls together and muddles through, honouring the laudable aims or at least implied intent of the provisions rather than exploiting the ambiguous or nonsensical text. Past precedent unfortunately suggests that there are few clubs entirely above rules-lawyering on questions of player eligibility where it is to their clear advantage. We are consequently reduced to hoping that a spirit of collegiality prevails, at least until the rules can be clarified and rationalised next season, but in the meantime one can’t help but feel the KNCB has laid down a rake for its own face, so to speak.
The need for this new system has been a point of rare consensus among Dutch cricket clubs, and it would be a shame if it were to founder simply due to its initial drafters’ lack of attention to detail. The goals of the system are shared by most if not all in Dutch cricket, and fundamentally a points-based model is likely the best suited to the needs of the game in the Netherlands. For all its faults, even in its current sorry state the system is likely workable if all parties strive in good faith to make it work.
Lets hope they do.
TKcricket 