The funding body for Dutch sport, NOC*NSF, spread alarm among the majority of sporting organisations on Tuesday when it announced its plans for supporting the upper echelons over the next four years; it is cutting back the number of sports it funds from 58 to 33, and the number of programmes from 180 to a mere 55.

A media release from the KNCB on Wednesday opens with a blunt statement which is echoed by other disappointed governing bodies: ‘NOC*NSF informed the KNCB on Tuesday that it sees no future in cricket’. And as journalist Eline van Suchtelen put it in the newspaper Trouw: ‘The message from NOC*NSF is clear: winning medals is more important than participation.’

The decision is in a sense merely the implementation of a strategy which has been known for some time, but the extent of the shift is nevertheless shocking, and it is scarcely surprising that the Bond, like many of its sister organisations, is manifestly angry.

The KNCB had submitted to NOC*NSF essentially the same investment plan which recently earned it a three-year, $US1.5 million grant from the ICC under its Targeted Assistance and Performance Program (TAPP). The aim, the Bond’s release declares, was to enable the Dutch men’s team to gain an established position within the top ten countries of world cricket.

Richard Cox commented on the decision: ‘We are extremely disappointed in the decision. The Dutch side has demonstrated in recent years its ability to beat higher-ranked teams.

’The victory over England in the World Twenty20 championship in 2009 created a sensation all over the world, and two victories over Bangladesh in 2011 and 2012 and one against Zimbabwe in 2010 illustrate the progress made by the side.

’This appears to have been missed by NOC*NSF. Despite this disappointment the KNCB will continue to strive to earn a permanent place in the top 10.’

Cricket labours, of course, under two massive handicaps: it is not an Olympic sport, despite ICC affiliation with the International Olympic Committee, and the Full member status enjoyed by the leading ten cricket nations makes it extremely difficult, to say the least, to break into that privileged circle.

But with its increasingly narrow focus on sports which are seen to offer the prospect of Olympic medals NOC*NSF seems unimpressed by Dutch cricket’s real achievements, and the result is the loss of some €250k. per year in funding from that source.

Swimming, judo and korfball – a sport invented in the Netherlands and in which the Dutch have won eight of the nine world championships so far contested – are the biggest winners under the new policy, while others, like badminton, men’s basketball and canoeing, have shared cricket’s fate.