News

Rod Lyall 17/11/23

The Topklasse will be the poorer for the loss of national team captain Scott Edwards and opener Max O’Dowd following the announcement from Hoofdklasse club Kampong Utrecht that the pair, along with Spanish national coach Corey Rutgers will be leaving VOC Rotterdam and playing at Maarschalkerweerd.

Edwards made 509 runs for the Bloodhounds last season at an average of 50.90, while O’Dowd contributed 482 at 43.82, 186 of them in one brutal early-season innings against ACC.

In all, O’Dowd has made 3455 runs in 90 matches for VOC at an average of 45.46, including seven centuries, and Edwards 2671 at 46.86 in 76 games, with three hundreds.

They will leave a significant gap in the Rotterdammers’ top order, which it will not be easy to fill; even with them in the side the batting has tended to show signs of brittleness under pressure, and the side finished sixth in last season’s championship play-off.

For Kampong, on the other hand, the arrival of the two international stars will seriously strengthen their challenge for promotion to the Topklasse in 2025.

They were widely seen as somewhat unfortunate to be relegated from the twelve-team Topklasse in 2022, and they finished a creditable fourth in the Hoofklasse last season.

Edwards and O’Dowd will join national A-squad players Alex Roy and Pierre Jacod and under-18 seamer Gert Swanepoel at Maarschalkerweerd, and while they will miss parts of what promises to be another busy season because of their national team commitments, they are likely to cause plenty of headaches for opposing attacks in the matches they do play.

In statements on the Kampong website all three players stress the family-friendly atmosphere, the facilities and the ambitions of the Utrecht club, which (like VOC) boasts a turf square and hosts matches of the national men’s and women’s teams.

Rod Lyall 01/09/23

If the semi-final between Hermes-DVS and Quick Haag fortnight ago is any guide, then the Hoofdklasse grand final at Sportpark Harga on Saturday, which will determine which of the two sides returns to the Topklasse next season, should be a cracker.

Then it took a Nick Statham boundary off the final ball of the match to decide the outcome, Hermes winning by one wicket, and across the two formats the teams have been evenly matched all season, Hermes having won three of their five head-to-head meetings and Quick two.

Hermes have already secured a place in next year’s Topklasse T20 Cup, having beaten their rivals fairly comfortably in the final, and will be out to make it a double on Saturday.

Leading the charge will be two of their three overseas players: 19-year-old South African Ashley Ostling, the side’s leading run-scorer with 567 at an average of 43.62, and Spanish international Daniel Doyle Calle; New Zealander Will Hamilton is injured and will take no part.

But Quick’s attack will still need to contain Ostling and Doyle effectively if they are to have a realistic chance of taking the title and earning promotion.

Quick, though, have two outstanding overseas players of their own, not least Otago’s left-handed opener Cameron Jackson, whose 164-ball 223 last week snuffed out Kampong Utrecht’s hopes of making it to the grand final.

Jackson leads the Hoofdklasse batting aggregates with 890 runs at 68.46, closely followed by team-mate Beckham Wheeler Greenall with 768 at 69.82.

If the Hermes trio are crucial to their side’s chances, Jackson and Wheeler Greenall are scarcely less so for Quick, and early wickets will be vital in both innings.

One somewhat disturbing feature of the match is how little Dutch-produced young talent will be on display: of Hermes’ likely squad six were in the club’s side in or before their most recent appearance in the Topklasse in 2017, while in Quick’s case eight had played before their relegation in 2019.

The Father of the Hermes team is 48-year-old Statham, who made his top-flight debut in 1989 and who has notched up 11,175 runs in his 482 matches, while his opposite number at Quick is fellow former international Henk Mol, two years younger, with 7352 runs and 413 wickets in 365 games.

Mol is still taking wickets, his tally of 20 this season just one behind that of Quick’s leading wicket-taker Jeroen Brand, but the top wicket-taker in the competition is Hermes’ Sahil Kothari with 29.

With Dutch A-team captain Sebastiaan Braat – who also skippers the side – and brothers Olivier and Ralph Elenbaas in the attack, backed up by Roy Numair and Davey Verweij, Hermes probably have the more incisive bowling unit.

As against that, alongside Jackson and Wheeler Greenall Quick’s batting line-up includes skipper Daan Vierling, Lesley Stokkers, Bobby van Gigch, allrounder Brand and perhaps Henk Mol’s brother Geert Maarten, totalling close to a thousand top-flight matches between them, so there will be no lack of experience on either side.

Having taken the Hoofdklasse title last year, when there was no promotion to the Topklasse, Hermes have a point to prove, while Quick’s demolition of Kampong last week indicates that the Schiedammers are unlikely to have things all their own way.

Rod Lyall 27/08/23

Those who came to Westvliet on Saturday anticipating a close finish or a repeat of last year’s upset HCC victory went away disappointed, but there was no doubt about the home club’s elation as Voorburg simply steamrollered their way to their first championship win in twenty-one years, and the second in their history.

There was, though, no shortage of skill on display, not least from the ground staff, who after heavy rain in the early morning worked like Trojans to get the ground ready for an 11 o’clock start.

There were, it is true, a few moments in the opening overs when the defending champions could have thought that Voorburg skipper’s Sybrand Engelbrecht’s decision to bat first might misfire.

Hidde Overdijk bowled Nehaan Gigani in the third over, his 200th Topklasse wicket, and with the pitch showing early signs of vertical inconsistency as well as lateral movement, Michael Levitt and Musa Ahmad were beaten several times, Levitt at one point, immediately after unleashing a back-foot cover drive off Overdijk which probably remained the shot of the day, hazardously edging the bowler between keeper and first slip.

But the batters gradually took control, their partnership steadily mounting, and it would be the 38th over before HCC succeeded in breaking through again, by which time Levitt and Musa had put on 183 and the former had reached his fourth century of the season.

It was Musa who was the first to go, cutting at Patient Charumbira and well caught by Clayton Floyd at point, who knocked the ball upwards and took it at the second attempt; Musa had made 78 from 106 deliveries and hit six fours and a six.

The six had come off Daniel Doram, a potential match-winner for HCC, and that blow and the four which followed next ball had forced skipper Boris Gorlee to pull the tall left-arm spinner out of the attack.

He returned as soon as Musa had gone, however, and with the first ball of the next over bowled Levitt for a 119-ball 102, which had included twelve fours and a six.

Two wickets in seven balls must have given the Lions some hope, but it was quickly snuffed out by Engelbrecht, who contributed a 10-ball cameo of 20 before he was trapped in front by Doram, and by Noah Croes, whose 36 ensured that the total kept motoring towards 300.

Although he was eventually caught by Charumbira off Overdijk, 50 runs came from the last five overs, Ryan Klein adding 24 of them before skying a return catch to Overdijk, and the innings closed on a very imposing 295 for seven.

Overdijk’s three wickets had come at a cost of 78, while Doram picked up two for 49, Henrico Venter was the most economical of the HCC attack, his eight wicketless overs costing just 30 runs.

It was a demanding chase against a Voorburg bowling unit which included four internationals, and Viv Kingma and Karl Nieuwoudt gave little away in their opening exchanges with Jonathan Vandiar and Tonny Staal.

The decisive moment came when Vandiar, who had just creamed Kingma for four through extra cover in his first real sign of aggression, clipped the next delivery hard to short midwicket, where Engelbrecht took a superb low catch.

Staal and Ratha Alphonse added 34 before Klein bowled Alphonse, and in his next over the paceman removed the other main threat, Staal pulling him down the throat of Musa on the midwicket boundary and departing for 36.

That pretty much pricked HCC’s balloon, and when Shariz Ahmad came into the attack and almost immediately bowled Teun Kloppenburg, Voorburg were well on their way to a comprehensive victory.

Gorlee, assisted by Clayton Floyd, continued to resist, but with boundary opportunities few and far between the asking rate began its inexorable rise, and soon HCC were needing in excess of eight an over to have any chance of turning the game around.

Eventually Kingma returned to bowl Floyd, but it was left to Klein, bowling full, fast and straight, to finish things off, dismissing Gorlee and Charumbira with successive deliveries and then, after a brief flourish by Overdijk which ended when he was well stumped by Croes off Shariz, repeated the trick by bowling first Crowley and then Venter, to end the innings on 155.

Klein finished with a career-best six for 15, while Shariz’s two for 24 brought his tally for the season to a remarkable 47 wickets at an even more remarkable average of 10.66.

As if this were not enough, Voorburg’s women’s team, after being bowled out for 87, dismissed Quick Haag for 75, Dutch international Eva Lynch taking five for 9, making Voorburg the first club since Kampong Utrecht in 1992 to win both the men’s and women’s titles in the same year.

Rod Lyall 25/08/23

Back at the start of the season, much of the talk was about the formidable squad which Voorburg had assembled, and with just one defeat in 14 50-over matches last year’s beaten grand finalists have fully lived up to that billing.

For defending champions HCC, however, 2023 seemed likely to be a season of rebuilding, with half of their side from last year unavailable, and it is remarkable that after a shaky start to their campaign they have again reached the grand final, peaking at just the right time and giving themselves a real chance of winning the title from fourth position on the table.

The Lions have momentum on their side, but any grand final comes down to how the two sides perform on the day; how, then, do the squads stack up against one another?

The Voorburg pace attack against the HCC top order

With current internationals Viv Kingma and Ryan Klein, backed up by the up-and-coming Mees van Vliet and the steady medium pace of Karl Nieuwoudt – who often shares the new ball with Kingma – Voorburg have plenty of quicker options, none of the four having gone for more than five an over across the whole campaign.

Kingma may only have nine wickets so far, but he has the best strike rate of anyone in the side, and he has a proven ability to dismiss good batters inside the initial powerplay.

For HCC, the arrival of Ratha Alphonse has been a real bonus, his 386 runs at 32.17 having compensated to a considerable degree for the fact that Tonny Staal has had a relatively quiet season by his standards, averaging just 15.94.

In Alphonse’s absence in the play-off phase, however, the Lions have experimented with Jonathan Vandiar as an opening partner for Staal, Alphonse slotting in at three, and it will be interesting to see who opens on Saturday.

Vandiar’s innings against Punjab in the qualifying final was a model of restraint, but there is an argument that he is at his most effective at four or five, when his attacking instincts can be given full reign.

The top five is completed by captain Boris Gorlee and by sixteen-year-old Teun Kloppenburg, the latter having strung together three consecutive half-centuries in his first Topklasse season; if Vandiar does drop down the order, he and Kloppenburg have the potential to capitalise on any platform that Alphonse, Staal and Gorlee have been able to build.

The HCC pace attack against the Voorburg top order

Hidde Overdijk and Daniel Crowley have been in awesome form in their most recent games, reducing Sparta to 25 for four in the initial powerplay and putting Punjab under sustained pressure in the qualifier, and Overdijk’s 29 wickets at 20.07 puts him in equal third place among the leading wicket-takers.

There are, perhaps, more questions about the change bowling, with Henrico Venter and Patient Charumbira among the more expensive of the regular seam bowlers, although both have also been able to pick up valuable wickets; they have, though, been deployed later in the innings than Klein and Van Vliet have for Voorburg.

With a top five who all average 30 (or in Musa Ahmad’s case, just a tad short of it), Voorburg have a formidable line-up, but on closer inspection those stats are a little less encouraging: having made 456 runs at 57 in the first phase, Michael Levitt has added only 97 at 16.17 since the competition resumed and Noah Croes, too, has been less dominant in the back end.

Against that, Musa has made more runs in six innings since the break than he did in nine before it, and the transformation in skipper Sybrand Engelbrecht’s form has been even more dramatic: only Tayo Walbrugh made more runs in July and August than Engelbrecht’s 333.

All in all, then, the ability of Overdijk and Crowley to make early inroads into that imposing Voorburg top order may be one of the factors on which this year’s title depends.

Voorburg’s spinners against the HCC middle order

The most interesting battles of the day, however, may come when Engelbrecht and Gorlee turn to their slower bowlers.

With 45 wickets so far, Shariz Ahmad just needs what would be his fifth five-for of the season to become the first player since Chris Pringle in 1996 to take fifty wickets in a season, and it would come as little surprise if he did it; few batters have been able to get on top of him all year.

While his fellow wrist-spinner Philippe Boissevain has had a more modest return with 17 wickets at 21.59, he makes an outstanding foil for the young googly bowler, and they can be expected to cause plenty of problems in the middle overs.

Who’s at the crease when they come on will depend, of course, on how successful Voorburg’s quicker bowlers have been, and there could be a fascinating contest between their wiles and the aggression of Vandiar and Kloppenburg.

Beyond that, the HCC middle order of Clayton Floyd, Overdijk and Charumbira will need all their wits about them if they are to make a significant contribution to their side’s total.

HCC’s spinners against the Voorburg middle order

As against Voorburg’s wrist spinners, the Lions have two left-arm finger spinners, of whom late signing Daniel Doram has been distinctly the more effective with 27 wickets at 15.04 apiece.

His figures in the last two games of 10 – 6 – 4 – 1 and 9.2 – 2 – 14 – 4 were truly remarkable, and if he can manage something of the same order on Saturday it could be a game-changer.

Floyd has had a less successful campaign, but like Boissevain he provides outstanding support for Doram when the two are bowling in tandem, and his reliability means that Gorlee can use seamers Venter and Charumbira more sparingly.

Their battle with the Voorburg middle order, again, will be a key feature of the game, and of the later batters only Shariz, with 261 runs, has a comparable record to that of Floyd, Overdijk and Charumbira, although it must be said that the dominance of the top five has given them relatively few opportunities.

It’s all shaping up for a memorable contest, one that is, as election-night commentators say, too close to call. All this, and a chance to see the World Cup trophy as well!