It has been evident to Dutch cricket followers over the past few months that there were problems involving the Excelsior ’20 batsman Daan van Bunge, who has not been included in a national side since the World Twenty20 qualifier in Dubai in February.

But the dispute broke into the open last week with an article in De Volkskrant – a newspaper not exactly noted for the depth of its interest in cricket – written by the journalist Rob Kramp and giving Van Bunge’s side of the story.

The article suggests that the player has effectively been ‘banned’ by the national selectors, and that the roots of this decision lie in the way he responded to his treatment by the KNCB in general and national coach Peter Drinnen in particular. Matters appear to have come to a head last winter, when Van Bunge was playing club cricket in Australia.

’The e-mails [I received] from the Bond and Drinnen showed absolutely no respect,’ Kramp quotes Van Bunge as saying. ‘I was treated as someone who had to dance to the Bond’s tune.’

Underlying the dispute there are evidently two main, interlocking issues: the contract structure which the KNCB has started to develop, and availability for matches involving the Dutch national side and other commitments such as ICC training camps.

On the first, there is little doubt that Van Bunge, like all the other Dutch internationals, suffered from the lamentable mismanagement of the initial contractual arrangements, and that he is certainly not the only player who is dissatisfied with the system which has now been introduced.

The lack of meaningful negotiations with the players as individuals and as a group built up a good deal of ill-feeling through much of 2009, and even when the new regime of CEO Richard Cox and treasurer Peter van Wel cut through the Gordian knot to produce an acceptable set of contracts, financial constraints meant that they were able to offer a lot less than anyone would have wished.

But the way in which Van Bunge presents his argument suggests that he sees himself as a special case, and that he was somehow singled out for unreasonable treatment while he was in Australia.

It is, obviously, impossible to judge the truth of these claims without access to the documents, but there is no doubt about the sense of injustice which led the player to declare that from now on he would be giving priority to his club and to the development of a career outside cricket.

According to his own account, that would mean that he would only be available for ’30-35%’ of Dutch matches, and to his credit he acknowledges that it is understandable that Drinnen finds this too few – although in fact the selection of national teams is the responsibility of a three-man selection committee, not of the national coach.

The chairman of that committee, Darrin Murray, emphasized this week that the selectors had thought long and hard about Van Bunge’s situation, even meeting with him in late June in an attempt to resolve the matter.

’Many factors are taken into account in selecting a squad,’ Murray says, ‘and performances in the middle are only part of the story. Attitude and commitment, amongst other things, are vital, and Daan has left us in no doubt that his primary commitments are to his club and to the furthering of his career outside cricket.

‘Of course we recognise that for most Associate players international cricket has to be combined with the demands of work, and we try to select the strongest sides available taking due account of players’ other commitments.

‘But with the World Cup only six months away we expect a high level of commitment to the intensive programme which faces the national squad, and Daan has made it clear that he is unable to offer that. Indeed, when he was asked, admittedly at very short notice, to step into the CB40 side as a late replacement for Nick Statham, he declined to make himself available.’

Van Bunge himself is convinced of his right to a place in the World Cup squad.

‘If Drinnen takes the best fifteen players and deals correctly,’ he is quoted as saying, ‘I don’t need to worry. I’ll always be there.’

But the article does him few favours by exaggerating his achievements on the field. Describing him as ‘a run machine’, Kramp claims that he has scored ‘around 650 runs’ in the Dutch competition every season since returning to The Netherlands in 2006. This is far from the truth: he did make 650 exactly in 2009, but his tally before that had been 609 in 2006, 394 in 2007 and 585 in 2008.

He is undoubtedly a player of considerable ability, but his record for the Dutch national side is not quite that of a ‘run machine’: 387 runs in ODIs at an average of 22.76, 351 in Intercontinental Cup games at 23.10, and 1330 in all List A matches at 28.91. If we look at the period since 2006, his List A record is more modest still: 588 runs at 21.78.

Kramp’s piece also contains a rather odd reference to the 2004 season, when Van Bunge had a trial with Middlesex.

Stressing the player’s readiness to turn out for The Netherlands in the past, he states that ‘When he was on the point of breaking into English cricket [at the end of his undoubtedly successful period with the MCC Young Cricketers], he was summoned to play for The Netherlands in a European championship, with consequences for his employer, Middlesex.’

The suggestion that Van Bunge’s loyalty to the Dutch cause somehow interfered with a possible county career is ridiculous, and he himself was much more honest on the subject when I interviewed him in 2006. He did indeed miss two totesport League matches for Middlesex during that European Championship in July 2004, but in the three games he did play he made 11 runs at 5.50, and he enjoyed only modest success in the three matches he played for the county Second XI.

It does not seem likely that by going public in this way Van Bunge has brought himself any closer to realising his dream of playing in a third World Cup. Regrettably, it is more likely to have confirmed the selectors’ belief that for all his talent he would not fit comfortably into the squad they are in the process of putting together.