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Rod Lyall 20/07/20

There are three unbeaten sides – VRA, Punjab and HCC — after Sunday’s third round of matches in this season’s competition-that-isn’t, while in a table still notable for its symmetry there are also three teams still in search of a win.

In the only game of the day which matched up two previously-unbeaten sides HCC were clear-winners of a hard-fought battle with Voorburg at Westvliet.

The contest turned on a 123-run partnership for HCC’s sixth wicket between Boris Gorlee and Hidde Overdijk, which took them in the space of 26 overs from a fairly perilous 74 for four to a much healthier 197 for five with five overs remaining for a final flourish.

Overdijk was the enterprising of the pair, his 61 coming from 75 deliveries, while Gorlee continued into the final over of the innings before falling to opposing skipper Bas de Leede for a solid 121-ball 81.

There were two wickets apiece for Viv Kingma, Ali Ahmed Qasim and De Leede as HCC sloed on 235 for seven.

Righardt Pieterse and Tom de Grooth began encouragingly for Voorburg, the total reaching 43 before Overdijk secured the breakthrough, and then De Leede and Floris de Lange made a bid to match Gorlee and Overdijk’s contribution by putting on 64 for the fourth wicket.

Then, however, with the total on the dreaded 111, the first of four wickets for Musa Ahmad saw the Voorburg captain depart for 38, followed by three more in the space of six deliveries without addition to the score.

Ahmad himself claimed three in five balls, and with Clayton Floyd removing De Lange for 30 the game w effectively over.

Alyan Razzaqi and Kingma showed a little defiance, but the innings closed on 148, Ahmad finishing with four for 26.

At the Hazelaarweg Punjab’s Stef Myburgh posted the first century of the competition, his 105 not out more than matching Pieter Seelaar’s unbeaten 93 for VOC and guiding his side to a six-wicket victory.

Seelaar’s determined effort stiffened the Bloodhounds’ resolve after Suleiman Tariq had grabbed three early wickets to threaten another VOC collapse, and a half-century stand with Arnav Jain (21) and then one of 97 with Corey Rutgers (43) enabled them to reach 197 for six.

Much as that was an improved effort by VOC it seemed unlikely to trouble Punjab’s powerful batting line-up, and Myburgh got them off to a flying start by plundering two fours and a six off Jain’s opening over.

He received valuable support from brothers Rehmat, Asad and Saqib Zulfiqar and from Yasir Usman, but it was Myburgh who dominated the innings against a fairly pedestrian VOC attack further hindered by the absence of Seelaar, and Punjab cruised to victory with almost twelve overs to spare.

The defeat of last year’s champions, Excelsior ’20 Schiedam, by VRA Amsterdam at Thurlede was, if anything, even more convincing.

Put in to bat by Excelsior captain-for-the-day Joost Kroesen, VRA made 244 before they were dismissed in the last of their overs, the engine-room of the returning Eric Szwarczynski, Ben Cooper and Peter Borren, with a total of 630 top-flight games between them, exacting a heavy toll upon Excelsior’s young and experienced attack.

Szwarczynski showed that he is still one of the finest batsmen in the competition with a composed 61 in his first knock of the season, while Cooper contributed 49 and Borren 50, while it was Sohail Bhatti, also playing for the first time this year, who was the most successful of the Excelsior bowlers with three for 45.

The Schiedammers were on the back foot from the moment Borren and keeper Szwarczynski combined to remove young Luuk Kroesen with the first ball of their reply, and while Roel Verhagen and Joost Kroesen added 49 for the second wicket, each making 24, their departures signalled a disappointing effort by the depleted champions.

Quirijn Gunning struck the decisive blow, removing danger-man Lorenzo Ingram, and he then worked his way through the middle and lower order, taking four for 31 and probably deserving more.

Borren and Adeel Raja each collected a brace, and Excelsior were ultimately dismissed for 95 in just 28.1 overs, giving VRA a 149-run victory and taking them to the top of the table on net run rate.

The quickest result of the day came at Craeyenhout, where home side HBS made short work of their game against trouble-plagued Dosti United.

Mahesh Hans, another stand-in skipper in the absence of Vinoo Tewarie, elected to bat first, but his side were soon on the way to another disappointing total.

Their 84 was something of an improvement on their previous efforts, but they had little chance of holding an HBS side in which, as it turned out, Tobias Visée was in his most rampant mood.

It was Wessel Coster who was the main destroyer of the Dosti innings, taking five for 26, while Benno Boddendijk played his part by taking three catches to claim the first three wickets by the time the total reached 20; only Touseef Ahmed showed any real resistance, making 23.

Then Visée took over, his 67 coming from just 24 deliveries and including six fours and five sixes, two of them so massive that the balls were irretrievable.

He perished just before the end, caught behind off Ahmed, but Coster and Reece Mason completed the nine-wicket victory in just 9.1 overs.

ACC’s defeat of Sparta 1888 at Het Loopveld began in dramatic fashion, 16-year-old seamer Mees van Vliet bowling Sawan Sardha and Faisal Iqbal with the first two deliveries of the match.

He went on to claim two more wickets and finish with four for 39, and with Charles McInerney taking four for 26 and Antony Alangara Napoleon two for 6 Sparta could only manage 101; opener Prithviraj Balwantsingh top-scored with 29.

Iqbal struck back when ACC replied, removing McInerney with the third ball he faced, but 35 from Clayton Burnett and smaller contributions from Jamieson Mulready and Anis Raza were enough to give the home side a comfortable five-wicket win.

Max Hoornweg put them under as much pressure as he could with the scalps of all three of the principal scorers, but in the end the Sparta total was too small to be defended, and ACC won with more than 20 overs to spare.

Rod Lyall 13/07/20

Time was that it was not uncommon in Dutch cricket for all four innings of a two-innings match to be completed in a single day, no side making much over 50 and all 40 wickets falling in the space of eighty or so overs.

Then a number of things happened: pitches and batting techniques improved, and eventually two-innings cricket was replaced by the one-day game. Even more significant, from the late 1970s onward clubs were permitted an overseas player, euphemistically known as the ‘coach’ but more frequently a hired gun who did little or no coaching but did the job they were employed for, winning matches with bat and/or ball.

Suddenly this season, the impact of coronavirus has driven overseas players largely – though not, as we shall see, entirely – from the scene, and we can more clearly see what the past forty years have achieved in the progress of Dutch domestic cricket.

And even when you take the lack of practice into account, you have to say it’s not an unrelievedly pretty sight.

Two matches on Sunday bore a distressing resemblance to the two halves of one of those long-ago games in what used to be called the Eerste Klas: across the two, 33 wickets fell in 81.5 overs, a total of 224 runs were scored, and the best individual effort was 22, only eight of the 38 batsmen reaching double figures.

At the Bermweg in Capelle a/d IJssel Sparta 1888 skittled ten-man VOC Rotterdam for just 46, and then knocked off the runs for the loss of three wickets in 7.2 overs.

It was a dispiriting performance by VOC, their two most experienced batsmen in skipper Pieter Seelaar and Jelte Schoonheim contributing one run between them, and once Sparta had gained the initial breakthrough they never took their foot off the pedal, Joost Martijn Snoep claiming three for 7, Nasratullah Ibrahimkil three for 5 and Manminder Singh two for 1.

Ramdas Upadhyaya and Arnav Jain showed the only real resistance, doubling the score in a dogged fifth-wicket partnership of 24, but for the most part the hallmark of the innings was tame surrender.

Sparta rubbed it in by dismissing the VOC bowling with near-contempt, although youngster Tiso Moorman picked up two wickets and Schoonheim one.

Dosti United collapsed for the second week in succession, this time against HCC at De Diepput, but this time they did so chasing, and chasing a modest target after their new South African, Touseef Ahmed, one of the handful of overseas players in the competition this year, had claimed six for 26 and confined the home side to a meagre 80.

But Dosti were soon reduced to 8 for four in reply, and only a belligerent 22 from Wahid Masood and an unbeaten 11 from Ahmed, batting at No. 10, enabled them get up to 50.

HCC needed only three bowlers, Hidde Overdijk taking three for 24 and Olivier Klaus four for 15 in an innings which lasted just 21 overs.

Elsewhere, the cricket bore a closer resemblance to what we have become used to.

VRA Amsterdam posted the highest total of the day, making 276 for eight against HBS Craeyenhout in the Amsterdamse Bos.

Highlight of the innings was opener Vikram Singh’s knock of 99, run out in the final over going for a second run which would have given him his second Topklasse century.

Singh was given good support, first by Ben Cooper with an aggressive 35-ball 48, then by Leon Turmaine, who made 36, and finally by Debrub Dasgupta, whose 39 hammered home VRA’s advantage.

HBS never seemed likely to mount a threatening challenge, especially after Quirijn Gunning had removed skipper Tobias Visée for 11, and although Navjit Singh and Adil Ahmed showed some resistance in the middle order they were eventually dismissed for 193 in the last of their 50 overs, still 83 runs short of VRA’s total.

Turmaine was the most successful of the home side’s bowlers with four for 40.

The most absorbing of the matches was at Westvliet, where ACC, recovering from 55 for five to set Voorburg a reasonable target of 197, gave the home side a scare in the middle overs before going down to a four-wicket defeat.

That they were able to put Voorburg under any pressure at all was due to a patient sixth-wicket stand of 84 between Ram Ramesh Babu (56) and 17-year-old Shreyas Potdar, who went on to post his maiden Topklasse half-century and ended unbeaten on 62.

Pick of the Voorburg attack was Stef Mulder with career-best figures of five for 33.

The Villagers appeared to be cruising to victory when Rigchardt Pieterse (31) and Bas de Leede (56) put on 95 for the first wicket in just 16 overs, but then they lost five wickets for 12 runs in eight overs, Anis Raza and Sahil Kothari claiming two apiece, and it seemed as if ACC might again haul themselves back into the game.

Philippe Boissevain had other ideas, however, and in company first with Floris de Lange and then with Viv Kingma he steered his side to victory, making a 57-ball 65 not out and getting Voorburg home with more than six overs to spare.

Excelsior ’20 Schiedam won the title last year by defending low totals, but even 186 proved insufficient t the Zomercomplex as Punjab Rotterdam took just 34.4 overs to cruise to a five-wicket win.

Lorenzo Ingram was, as so often in the past, the mainstay of the Excelsior innings, making exactly 50, but once he had gone the Schiedammers, fielding two teenage debutants, were unable to build on that foundation.

Mubashar Hussain claimed three early wickets at a cost of 25, and then Suleiman Tariq again returned to finish off the tail and end with three for 28.

Stef Myburgh got the Punjab reply off to it accustomed hectic start, belting 34 off 24 deliveries, but Rehmat Zulfiqar held things together even when Niels Etman chipped in with three wickets, removing brothers Asad and Saqib, and eventually Rehmat himself for a well-made 53.

But by that time Punjab’s Indian-born New Zealander Anil Nidamanuru had settled in, and his 41-ball 56 not out, including two fours and five sixes, ensured that his side, like VRA, HCC, Voorburg, and now Sparta, retained their 100% record.

Rod Lyall & Bertus de Jong 10/07/20

Unsurprisingly, there were plenty of signs of rust when the Topklasse got under way last Sunday – the inclement weather may have contributed to that as much as the long, largely practice-free lay-off – but there were also some encouraging signs that, despite the absence of clear goals and menaces in this foreshortened season we may be in for some good, entertaining cricket.

RL: VRA Amsterdam, finding themselves with an unscheduled home start to their campaign and having celebrated with a comprehensive demolition of Dosti, will entertain HBS Craeyenhout in the Bos this week. The Crows found promoted side Punjab Rotterdam at full throttle last Sunday, and despite some solid resistance from new recruit Tim Drummond and some determined bowling from seamers Ferdi Vink and Najvit Singh they were unable to recover from a disastrous early batting collapse. VRA’s attack, even without Quirijn Gunning, was too much for Dosti, and they will be keen to demonstrate that that effort wasn’t a flash in the pan. HBS’s best hope might be to put the home side’s untested batting under early pressure, but that would need Tobias Visée to start by calling correctly.

BdJ: The Amsterdammers may have been forced by circumstance to blood a bevy of youth players earlier than planned, but Peter Borren’s confidence in his young charges seems to be well founded. While the batting indeed remains somewhat untested this season, the presence of Borren himself as well as Dutch internationals Vikram Singh and Ben Cooper, who were not required to bat last week, means it’s unlikely that the batting will be VRA’s chief concern, especially with HBS missing their top three wicket-takers from last season in Farshad Khan, Zac Gibson and Berend Westdijk. Visée and Drummond may be looking forward to getting stuck into a gifted but rusty or raw VRA attack, but it will likely require a serious score from one or the other to put VRA under real pressure.

RL: Having dominated HBS almost from start to finish, Punjab will take on last year’s champions Excelsior ‘20 at the Zomercomplex. Excelsior, of course, missed their match last week because their Thurlede pitch was unplayable, and have therefore not had a chance to settle before facing a buoyant Punjab side which has been reinforced by a full quartet of Zulfiqars. The Schiedammers do have Lorenzo Ingram, but they are without opener Tim Etman, who moved to Australia at the end of last season, and with just the one overseas player in the side will have a different balance from that which has seen them claim three titles in four years.

BdJ: If VRA are fortunate to be able to fall back on their youth in this unusual season, Punjab’s acquisition of the full set of Zulfiqars gives them still greater depth, and could not have been more timely. Though missing their intended overseas players this season, Steph Myburgh demonstrated that he remains a menace at the top of the order, and backed up by a quartet of Zulfiqars the Punjab batting looks a sound as any in the league this year. Despite skipper Tariq hitting the ground running with ball in hand, however, the bowling attack is as yet unproven and Excelsior are unlikely to prove as cooperative as HBS were last week, at least in terms of run-outs. Probably the toughest game to call this week, but with Ingram in the side it’s never safe to bet against the title-holders.

RL: The other unknown quantity is Sparta 1888, whose journey to Thurlede last Sunday was in vain. So their first outing, at the Bermweg, will be against VOC Rotterdam, who showed their lack of practice against Voorburg in their opening game. The main exception was Ayaz Durrani, who responded admirably to the increased responsibility of opening the innings, but VOC will need the top and middle order to weigh in more effectively if there are to set their opponents reasonable challenging targets. Sparta do, of course, have a proven match-winner in former international allrounder and new skipper Mudassar Bukhari, and will looking to their new acquisition Lenert van Wyk to anchor a batting line-up which was pretty brittle last year.

BdJ: With Sparta yet to bowl a ball in anger this season it’s hard to know what to expect when they take the field on Sunday, but on paper they look in decent enough shape. Among returning players, Bukhari was without question the MVP of the 2019 Topklasse, and if he can replicate that form this summer then Sparta will be serious title contenders (or would be if there was a title). VOC, conversely, are a long way off fielding a first choice eleven and the eleven they did field last week still underperformed. It will take a remarkable turnaround from Pieter Seelaar’s side if they are to put points on the board this Sunday.

RL: Voorburg looked impressive in their win over VOC, and in Viv Kingma, Ahmed Ali Qasim, Bas de Leede and Stef Mulder they arguably have the sharpest seam attack in the competition, even after the departure of Brandon Glover. They are at home to ACC this Sunday, and despite the initial success of their new opening pairing of Cameron Burnett and Charles McInerney the Amsterdammers seem likely to find it tough to recover from the loss of three Zulfiqar brothers and Shirase Rasool. There may be more questions about Voorburg’s batting than their bowling, and they needed a captain’s innings from Tom de Grooth to see off VOC. But Righardt Pieterse demonstrated that he can be a useful opening partner for his skipper, and with De Leede also in the top order and a clutch of other promising youngsters this could be a valuable team-building season for the Villagers.

BdJ: With the absence of the Smit brothers and Clayton Floyd’s departure, VCC certainly do have a rather longer tail this season than they’d like, but it’s questionable whether that will prove a problem against ACC’s attack. The arrival of Burnett and McInerney, at least on first showing, promises to alleviate the batting concerns somewhat, but ACC will need someone to step up on Sunday to do the same with the ball if they hope to take two points back from Westvliet.

RL: There may be no title at stake this year, but HCC did enough in beating ACC last Sunday that if there were they would be serious contenders. Admittedly, their attack had to labour for nearly 25 overs before claiming their first wicket, but once they had the breakthrough they never looked back. They are a well-balanced bowling outfit, all the more effective for the arrival of Damien Crowley, and his unbeaten 74 showed that he, like opener Musa Ahmad, is a great acquisition. It will take a huge effort for Dosti Amsterdam to recover from last week’s debacle on their visit to De Diepput, although skipper Vinoo Tewarie has some talented local players at his disposal and will give a better account of themselves second time around.

BdJ: Though Burnett and McInerney’s opening stand on Sunday does raise some questions about the effectiveness of HCC’s seam attack without Qasim and Street, nothing about Dosti’s display at the Bos lost week suggested a team equipped to take advantage. The absence of Taruwar Kohli , Mohammad Hafeez and Anees Davids was keenly felt, and now also lacking Rahil Ahmed, Dosti’s batting looks threadbare indeed. Mashesh Hans and skipper Vinoo Tewarie will need to provide contributions commensurate with their senior roles in the side if they are to compete against an HCC side that looks scarcely weaker than the one that challenged for the title last year.

Rod Lyall’s tips: VRA, Punjab, Sparta, Voorburg, HCC.

Bertus de Jong’s tips: VRA, EXcelsior, Sparta, Voorburg, HCC.

Rod Lyall 06/07/20

Global pandemics may come and go, but the Dutch climate is eternal. So it did not come as a surprise that the weather at the weekend rained on the KNCB’s parade, causing one Topklasse match to be abandoned without a ball being bowled, another to be reduced to 33 overs a side, and two more to start an hour late.

Ironically, or perhaps logically, the only game to escape unscathed was the one at Hazelaarweg, which had already been cut to 40 overs a side by agreement between the captains because VOC Rotterdam were unable to raise a team for an 11 o’clock start.

The Rotterdam club, national champions two years ago and reigning Twenty20 Cup-winners, have already had to pull their second team out of the competition because of declining player numbers, and were one of a small minority of clubs who preferred a T20 format to 50-over cricket. Even so, it was a further sign that all is not well with one of Dutch cricket’s proudest clubs.

The first day of top-division cricket saw several newcomers thrive, not least 14-year-old Luke Hartsink, whose three wickets for 19 runs from seven overs helped VRA Amsterdam reduce a makeshift Dosti side to 55 all out.

His partner in crime was former international Adeel Raja, 25 years his senior and a veteran of 250 matches, who returned the remarkable figures of 6 – 3 – 6 – 4.  Only two Dosti batsmen reached double figures, and despite losing a wicket off the opening delivery of their reply VRA needed just seven overs to complete an eight-wicket victory, Shirase Rasool making 27 not out on his first outing with his new club.

Also in a hurry to claim the points were newly-promoted Punjab Rotterdam, who needed only 21.1 overs to overhaul HBS Craeyenhout’s disappointing total of 126.

It could have been a good deal worse but for a knock of 49 from South African Tim Drummond, who in his first Topklasse match helped his side recover from 45 for six in partnerships with Ferdi and Steven Vink before he became the third HBS batsman to succumb to a run out.

Skipper Sulaiman Tariq took three for 24 for Punjab, and when his side began their chase Stef Myburgh raced to a 36-ball 51 and shared a brisk 74-run opening stand with Rehmat Zulfiqar, the eldest of the four brothers who are now reunited in the Rotterdammers’ gold and green.

Navjit Singh and Ferdi Vink picked up two wickets apiece as Punjab briefly faltered, but Sikander Zulfiqar ensured that they marked their return to the top flight with a comfortable win.

Newcomers made significant contributions on both sides of the encounter between ACC and HCC at Het Loopveld, which resulted in a six-wicket victory for the visiting Leeuwen.

Fielding only five players who turned out for the Amsterdam club last season, ACC got off to a promising start after being put in to bat, their new opening pairing of New Zealander Cameron Burnett and Charles McInerney sharing in a stand of 89 before Italian international Damien Crowley, on his first Topklasse appearance, had Burnett caught behind for 53.

Clayton Floyd, a transfer over the winter from Voorburg, then accounted for McInerney for 35 with the total on 109, and the remaining ACC batsmen were able to muster only another 57, seasoned campaigner Olivier Klaus collecting four for 37 and Floyd three for 30 as the home side collapsed to 166 all out.

HCC’s reply was built on a promising knock of 42 from opener Musa Ahmed, who has joined the Diepput club from Hoofdklasse side Groen en Wit, and an unbeaten run-a-ball 74 from Crowley, whose experience ensured that there would be no corresponding collapse by the Hagenaars.

The closest match of the round was that delayed, reduced-overs encounter between VOC Rotterdam and Voorburg, with Voorburg skipper Tom de Grooth posting the highest score of the day with a splendidly controlled 87 not out as his side chased down VOC’s 152 all out.

The VOC total owed much to 56 by Ayaz Durrani, promoted to open the innings, whose maiden Topklasse fifty was a combination of patient defence and some powerful aggression against the spinners, international Philippe Boissevain going for three lusty straight sixes.

But he received little support apart from a solid innings from Arnav Jain and a spirited one towards the end from Corey Rutgers – who arguably would be better placed somewhat higher up the order – while there were three wickets apiece for Voorburg’s international pacemen Viv Kingma and Bas de Leede.

The VOC total never seemed likely to be enough, and although there was a mid-order stumble from Voorburg, who went from 123 for two to 145 for six, as Jain, Pieter Seelaar and Jelte Schoonheim collected a brace of wickets apiece, De Grooth’s composure ensured that they got home with ten deliveries to spare.

The greatest disappointment of the day was for Excelsior ’20 and Sparta 1888, who arrived at Thurlede for the first match of the Schiedam club’s centenary season to discover that the covers had blown off overnight and the square was unplayable. Dutch weather can never be taken lightly.

Rod Lyall 17/02/20

Although there were suggestions a few weeks ago that the Topklasse might be in for a radical overhaul, in the end wiser counsels appear to have prevailed – for now, at least – and the 2020 season will be for most part closely resemble its immediate predecessors.

The schedule released by the KNCB last week provides for an 18-round round robin among ten teams, with no play-offs or finals.

The only differences from last season (apart from the obvious one that Quick Haag will be playing in the Hoofdklasse and will be replaced by Hoofdklasse champions Punjab Rotterdam) are comparatively minor: for the first time in many years there will not be a full Topklasse round on Pentecost Monday, although Dosti Amsterdam will be at home to Voorburg on that day.

The other innovation is that there will be a game between VOC Rotterdam and HBS Craeyenhout on Liberation Day, Tuesday, 5 May, an arrangement necessitated by the fact that both clubs will be engaged in the European Cricket League at La Manga on 6 June, the day their Topklasse fixture would otherwise have been in the programme.

As usual, top division matches will generally be played on Saturdays for the first seven weeks of the season, allowing youth competitions to run on Sundays until the schools break up for the summer holidays, and will then move to Sundays from 21 June.

No allowance has been made for the Dutch national side’s commitments from mid-June until the second week of July: three rounds of Topklasse matches are scheduled to be played during that period.

The competition will kick off on 2 May, with champions Excelsior ’20 at home to Voorburg, while VRA Amsterdam will entertain HCC, Dosti Amsterdam will play promoted Punjab, HBS Craeyenhout will take on Sparta 1888, and VOC will play ACC.

The transfer market appears to have been unusually busy over the winter, and with new overseas signings and a few retirements it will be as difficult as ever to predict the sides’ strengths and weaknesses.

That, however, is a matter to which we shall return in due course.

Rod Lyall 15/02/20

The draw for the KNCB’s new-look Twenty20 Cup has thrown up some extremely interesting group-phase encounters for when the competition gets under way in July.

Based on a seeded national ballot rather than the regional groups which have been used throughout the Cup’s 13-year history, the pools will bring new instances of some old rivalries, not the least of which is the Schiedam derby between Excelsior ’20 and Hermes-DVS with which Group A will open on 11 July.

The abandonment of the regional principle has necessitated a move from Friday-evening pool matches to a Saturday-afternoon programme, played between 11 July and 15 August, with the quarter-finals on 22 August and the traditional finals day, involving two semi-finals and the final, on the following Saturday, the day before the final round of Topklasse matches.

The seedings were based on the results of last year’s finals day, when VOC Rotterdam beat holders HBS Craeyenhout in the final, and on the 2019 standings in the Topklasse, Hoofdklasse and Eerste Klasse.

The outcome of the draw was:
Group A: Excelsior ’20, VRA Amsterdam, Quick Haag, Hermes-DVS, Ghausia Feyenoord.
Group B: VOC, Voorburg, Punjab Rotterdam, Rood en Wit Haarlem, Bloemendaal.
Group C: ACC, Dosti Amsterdam, Kampong Utrecht, Salland Deventer, Groen en Wit Amsterdam.
Group D: HBS Craeyenhout, HCC, Sparta 1888, VVV Amsterdam, Qui Vive Amsterdam.

In addition to the Schiedam derby, therefore, local fans can look forward to the Group B meeting between Rood en Wit and Bloemendaal (arguably the oldest surviving local derby in the Netherlands) on 18 July, the visit of holders VOC to promoted Topklassers Punjab in the same group on the same day, and the Amsterdam clash between ACC and Dosti in Group C on 1 August.

Group D not only features a meeting between HBS and HCC on 1 August, but also an encounter on 18 July between former Amsterdam neighbours VVV and Qui Vive, the latter newcomers to the competition by virtue of being the highest-placed first team in the Eerste Klasse last year.

While one aim of the restructuring was to ensure more even groups than have sometimes applied in the past, the mathematics inevitably meant that two pools would feature three Topklasse sides, with only two going through to the quarter-finals.

Those facing the tougher challenge are VOC, Voorburg and Punjab in Group B, and HBS, HCC and Sparta in Group D.

Victories by lower-division sides over their Topklasse rivals have tended to come few and far between in the T20 Cup, and have often been the result of top-flight clubs fielding weakened teams; if the new format succeeds in producing stronger sides, then, we may be in for even fewer upsets, although they are the essence of such a cup competition.

Rod Lyall 23/01/20

There are disturbing indications that the KNCB Board may be contemplating a curtailment of the 50-over men’s national championship in order to make more room for more Twenty20 matches.

These fears are inspired by an e-mail sent to all clubs last week by competitions co-ordinator Bart Kroesen, proposing significant changes to the programme from as early as the 2020 season.

The mail outlines a radically restructured T20 Cup, intended to address the widely-accepted problems with the existing format: the widespread lack of interest in the Friday-evening group matches, clubs’ difficulties in putting out full-strength sides for these games, and the disparities in strength between the four regionally-based groups.

Under the new proposals there would be four five-team pools, with a ballot largely based on last season’s 50-over rankings to determine their composition.

Since these groups could comprise teams as far apart as Deventer and Schiedam it would obviously be impractical to play the matches on Friday evenings, and Kroesen therefore proposes that the Cup be played on Saturday afternoons in July and August.

Clubs were given eight days, that is until Thursday, 23 January, to respond to this idea.

Although one might think this timescale was unreasonably short, especially in the middle of January, these proposals seem in themselves to offer a clear improvement in the T20 competition.

The sting, however, comes in the tail.

Clubs were in fact asked to choose between three options: the status quo, the proposed new-look T20 Cup, and a much more radical scheme, whereby the Top- and Hoofdklasse (the two top 50-over divisions) would be cut, ‘for example’ to a nine-match home-or-away first phase in place of the present 18-game home-and-away round robin, followed by play-offs among the top four and bottom six and a final.

This is presented as a way of avoiding double weekends with a T20 match on a Saturday and a 50-over league match on the Sunday, but its implications go much further.

We know from the Board’s consultation with the clubs back in September that there is anxiety about how the domestic competitions can be reconciled with an increasingly demanding national team schedule, not to mention the looming prospect of a month-long Euroslam T20 tournament.

So far-reaching are these challenges that the Board has established a Taskforce to consider all aspects of the future structure of the competitions.

Yet rather than waiting for that Taskforce to bring forward its recommendations – a process which is admittedly taking an inordinately long time – it appears that the Board has now decided to press ahead with a partial restructuring of its own.

The new-look T20 Cup may in itself be desirable, but a fundamental shift away from 50-over cricket towards a greater diet of T20 is another matter entirely.

It would do an injustice to the national team’s success in the ODI format, but much more important, it would ignore the importance of longer formats in the development of young cricketers, and it would threaten the longer-term future of the clubs, for whom the 50-over game is vitally important.

Coaches agree that an unrelieved emphasis upon T20 is bad for player development: if you haven’t learned the basic techniques in the longer formats you are, in most cases, unprepared for the much greater demands of T20.

Not everyone can be a David Warner, and young Dutch-produced players already find it difficult enough to make the transition to the international stage: there are many reasons why the national team contains so many players who learned their cricket elsewhere, but one of them is that they had the benefit from a young age of playing two-day club cricket.

So if the trend is to be less longer-format cricket in the Netherlands and more T20 the Board may as well come clean and abandon its declared objective of a national side with a greater proportion of home-produced players.

It’s easy to overestimate the attractions of T20: played at a level below that of the very best it can be a pretty hollow spectacle, and even in Australia there are signs that its appeal is waning.

Figures published this week show that attendances at the Big Bash have been declining for the past three seasons, even as the number of matches has increased, and this season are bumping along at barely 60% of the peak year 2016-17.

It may be that the suggestion of a reduced national championship is just a trial balloon, or an attempt to get the T20 Cup restructuring accepted by making it appear the less radical proposal, but we must hope that the good sense of the clubs will have made clear that it’s a non-starter.

And the Board should in any case do what it set out to do nearly a year ago: wait for the recommendations of its Taskforce and then come up with a comprehensive plan for the future of the Dutch domestic game.

Rod Lyall 23/09/19

What do we want the top divisions of the Dutch domestic competition to do?

Ideally, they should be a testing ground for the best young local cricketers, offering highly-competitive match situations and providing a showcase for the Dutch game.

That is, of course, an extremely idealistic view: for the clubs, the objective is to win the national championship – or at the very least, not to be relegated – and, wherever possible, to make a profit over the bar.

So there is inevitably a tension, between giving their young players a chance to shine and strengthening their squad by bringing in potential match-winners from overseas or from other clubs.

There’s a great deal of pious talk about the need to develop home-produced players, but when it comes down to it there are few clubs who would not give a key role to a star bowler or batter rather than invest in a young player who may or may not immediately be worth his place in the side.

And that was exacerbated this year by the collapse of the KNCB’s attempts to regulate the number of overseas players clubs are able to fly in for part or all of the season.

The main argument deployed in 2016 to justify the re-expansion of the top divisions to ten teams was that if the threat of relegation were reduced, with one team in ten facing the drop rather than one in eight, clubs would be more willing to pursue a proper development policy, giving promising young players their chance.

In my view at the time, the first part of the argument weighed much more heavily in the minds of club administrators than the second, and that has been proved right by subsequent events: there were actually more young Dutch players playing in the eight-team Topklasse in 2015 than in the ten-team competition this year – or, for that matter, in 2018, before the open-door policy on overseas players.

The truth is that some clubs were mostly interested in creating a cushion between themselves and the relegation zone by bringing in a couple of clubs who were weaker than they were, while others, lower down the rankings, could see that in three ten-team divisions they would have a better chance of moving into a higher bracket.

Still leaving the vexed question of the national team’s commitments and their impact upon the competition out of account for the moment, we return to the two objectives with which we began: which structure produces the best cricket, and which best fosters the emergence of talented young Dutch cricketers?

And it turns out that they are, in fact, closely related.

I remain convinced that there are simply not enough Dutch players of any age available to sustain ten competitive sides in the top flight.

Just take the statistics from the season just past: of the 45 batsmen in the Topklasse who achieved an average of 20.00 or better, 20 came from overseas, leaving 25 Dutch players who managed that basic level, and while the bowlers, as usual, did rather better – 32 of the 46 who had an average below 30.00 were Dutch – that still means that, throwing in a wicketkeeper for good measure, there was an average of three or four players per team who were essentially making up the numbers.

It will probably be argued in reply that this year’s Topklasse was the most competitive for years, and with four sides in contention for the title for the first dozen rounds or so and the relegation battle going down to the final round, that is undoubtedly true.

But did that indicate that the quality of Topklasse cricket has risen since the expansion to ten teams, or does it reflect a levelling down effect?

Even with the advent of an expanded cohort of overseas players this year, much of the cricket played was frankly disappointing, with several sides relying to an excessive degree on the performances of a small number of big-name players.

And that is surely linked to the relative paucity of youngsters who are pushing their way into their clubs’ first teams.

There are, of course, some notable exceptions: VRA’s Vikram Singh, who made his international debut last week, is a case in point, as are, to a somewhat lesser extent, ACC’s Shirase Rasool and Aryan Kumar.

But you can count such examples on your fingers, and as long as the present situation prevails that is unlikely to change.

There are numerous reasons for our being where we are: too few clubs have a coherent youth policy or even a youth section at all; the level of youth coaching Is at best uneven; the collapse of the under-19 competition and the current difficulties of the under-17 one mean that the opportunities for young players to develop their game against their peers are becoming ever more scarce.

In a healthy cricket environment, clubs’ second teams would be full of highly-motivated youngsters making runs and taking wickets and forcing themselves onto the selectors’ attention.

That is, however, hardly anywhere the case, and as what should be pathways disappear into the undergrowth the demotivating effects lead to more and more talented young players simply giving up.

That’s what’s so interesting about the Board’ idea of creating a separate development competition for the leading clubs’ second teams: if the clubs were to embrace this as a key part of their youth strategy (and I concede that’s a big if), the combination of a few experienced players as mentors and a bunch of talented youngsters could be the seedbed for stronger, home-produced first teams in three or five years’ time.

Along with that, though, there is a strong argument for reverting to a Topklasse comprising the best eight sides facing strong opponents almost every week, with the next best taking part in an equally hard-fought Hoofdklasse.

That would be a fair, realistic reflection of where Dutch cricket now is, with fewer than 2000 senior male cricketers of all ages playing at all levels, and it would give us the best chance of achieving that other objective of a national side in which Dutch-produced players are able to earn their place on their merits.