There will, as usual, be no shortage of crucial issues to discuss when representatives of the Topklasse and Hoofdklasse clubs meet on Thursday evening to review the recent season and to make recommendations for 2013.

There are even rumours that some clubs may be pushing for a return to ten-team divisions from the eight-team structure introduced in 2010. This would, I am convinced, be a huge mistake.

The arguments for eight teams per division remain as strong as they were four years ago; most important, there are simply not enough top-quality players to sustain ten competitive sides at the highest level.

One only has to study the scorecards in the Hoofdklasse to see that the effect of promoting three sides would be to weaken the top flight; it might make the battle to avoid relegation more interesting, but it would do little to improve the standard of domestic club cricket.

The restructuring of the competitions followed a long and exhaustive consultative process in the winter of 2008-09, and it would surely be wrong to reverse it without similar consideration and discussion.

That is not to say that some of the concerns of the proponents of a ten-team Topklasse are not understandable. With only 14 rounds of the regular competition and rained-off matches no longer being replayed, the domestic championship does have a sparser look, and this inevitably has an effect on the clubs� finances, specifically through their bar income.

But even this is an over-simplification: it is with this problem in mind that the KNCB introduced the much-criticised second phase, and the complaint that the Topklasse and Hoofdklasse do not involve sufficient matches takes no account of the introduction of the Twenty20 Cup, with its seven-match group phase in its current format.

In fact, the top clubs play about the same number of matches now as they did a decade ago, although admittedly nearly a third of them are in the shortest form of the game.

Another complicating factor is the increasingly hectic schedule of the national side, and the implications this has for the domestic programme. 2013 may be the last season that the Orange Lions take part in the Clydesdale Bank 40 League, but that will still mean twelve fixtures in that competition next year, and with the Dutch scheduled to entertain Ireland in the Intercontinental Cup and WCL Championship next summer and to visit Canada for matches in both competitions in September, the season will again present plenty of programming problems.

It is impossible to consider these issues without the vexed question of whether the domestic competition should continue in the absence of the national team coming into play, and it is paradoxical that some of the most vocal critics of an admittedly somewhat chaotic league programme are also those who are most insistent that club matches should not take place when the national side is in action.

In the longer term, as the KNCB considers how it will respond to its exclusion from the CB40, a coherent strategy will be needed, one which balances an attractive and challenging international programme with well-designed domestic competitions, but the immediate priority must be to devise a schedule for next season which meets the clubs� legitimate aspirations without putting unreasonable demands on the internationals.

As if that were not complicated enough, there is also the issue of how the senior competitions and youth cricket are to be fitted together.

This year�s experiment of moving most junior cricket to Sunday mornings � designed to halt the decline in youth numbers by avoiding the clash with football and hockey in May � is viewed by many clubs as a success, and it was achieved in large measure by scheduling the Twenty20 Cup group matches in the first weeks of the season.

Some, especially those who run junior cricket, believe that the experiment should be continued and extended, possibly with all senior men�s cricket moving to Saturdays, but with limited ground availability, a thriving Saturday-afternoon recreational competition (the �Zami�), many players who have work commitments on Saturdays, and a widespread conservatism which holds that Dutch domestic cricket has always been played on Sundays and should continue to be, such a proposal is certain to be highly controversial.

It is a question which demands careful consideration and open-minded discussion with a clear focus on the fundamental goal, which is surely to halt the long historic decline in playing numbers in Dutch cricket.

No single solution is going to please everyone or fit every set of circumstances, and the best course may be to continue and develop the piecemeal approach which produced this season�s compromise. One option, as I have suggested before, might be to create more room on Saturday mornings by starting senior matches later than the present 11 o�clock: if 100-over, or even 120-over, matches in southern England can begin as late as midday or one o� clock, there is no reason why the same should not happen in the Netherlands, where the sun actually sets marginally later.

Compared to this complicated matrix of inter-related issues, that of the overseas players rule may appear fairly straightforward, but it too is a matter which touches on vested interests and arouses strong feelings.

The number of permitted overseas players per team was reduced from four to three this season, and there is a strong case for a further reduction to two for 2013. There can be little doubt that foreign players are too dominant in the Dutch competitions, and while few clubs regularly fielded three foreigners � that is, those who do not hold a Dutch passport and who do not qualify for a dispensation after playing domestic cricket in the Netherlands for three consecutive seasons � those who did so were generally the most successful.

When we take into account the fact that Dutch passport holders like VRA�s Tom Cooper, HCC�s Logan van Beek and VOC�s Timm van der Gugten, and long-term residents like Dosti �s Mohammad Wasim and Mohammad Hafeez and Excelsior�s Stephan Myburgh, fall outside the three-foreigners rule, it can scarcely be argued that reducing the permitted number to two would have a damaging effect.

On the contrary, it would in many cases create an additional first-team place for a Dutch-produced player, and it might well liberate resources which could be more profitably spent on youth development.