The Winter General Meeting of the Dutch clubs on December 15th, which sensibly reverted to the Saturday afternoon slot, is traditionally the time to reflect on the season just gone. This one had, however, an additional attraction, namely that finally, after a long period with an interim KNCB Board comprising only two members, a new KNCB board of six members (soon to be seven) was installed.

The meeting began in a somewhat surreal atmosphere with acting chairman Jacques Mulders sitting alone (the other interim Board member Willem Winckel was not present) to address the assembled club delegates and other invitees. The review of the 2012 season, with as main elements a roll call of champions and the presentation of the statistical record of the season, the Kleefstra Almanac, was dealt with summarily so point six on the agenda, the focal point of the meeting, the installation of the new Board members, could take place as soon as possible.

A new KNCB Board has been a long time coming. Following chairman Marc Asselberg’s stepping-down in 2011 there was an abortive attempt by the so-called ‘Fontein group’ to find a new chairman. A ‘search committee’ comprising two club chairmen, John Wories of VRA and John Beyer of Hermes DVS, together with Mulders himself, at a later stage supplemented by Max de Bruin Jr. of ACC, then set out to find candidates, with a preferred emphasis on younger rather than older.

Well after such a long drawn-out process it is perhaps surprising to note that the choice of chairman fell on the candidate in situ. Formally, after nine years on the KNCB Board, Jacques Mulders had to request the meeting’s permission to continue for one more year, which was duly granted. So Jacques Mulders becomes chairman, initially for one more year .

The other new members of the Board were then introduced. The most interesting of these is without doubt Rod Lyall – not unknown in these pages - as vice-chairman and also with responsibility for ladies and youth cricket and the development and expansion of cricket in general. Geerhard de Grooth, a professional sports journalist, who in the past was chief editor of the now defunct national cricket magazine, comes on to the Board with publicity and communication as his portfolio.

Leo de Jong, someone with a long career as player and administrator at the Sparta club, will be responsible for marketing and sponsoring. Jeroen Smits, ex-captain of the Dutch national team and now chairman of the selectors, comes on to the Board to champion the interests of ‘top cricket’, both at the national and international levels. Finally, W.P. Boers, like Mulders someone with almost a decade of previous experience on the KNCB Board, returns as secretary. There is as yet no treasurer, although the new chairman assured that this appointment would be filled very soon.

It is clear that the objective of finding primarily younger administrators has not been achieved. Only Smits falls into that category. Against that there is a wealth of experience but perhaps of more interest and even concern, is the role and function of the new board vis a vis the KNCB office, which now, in stark contrast to only a few years ago, is a fully professional organization with a full-time CEO, and nine other employees.

This division of tasks was alluded to in particular by Guido Dukker, chairman of ACC, who referring to a letter sent to all the clubs (but not available at the meeting) and quoting from it wondered what kind of ‘guidance and direction’ the new Board would be giving and what its input will be to a ‘new structure that must lead to a new mission, vision and strategy and emanating from that a new strategy for the KNCB in future years’, that apparently is being worked on by the KNCB office under the guidance of the aforementioned John Beyer and Jacques Mulders. The new Board obviously needs time to bed in and give these issues due consideration but following a period in which the Board comprised only two interim members, these are very legitimate issues that need to be properly addressed.

Discussion of the other main points on the agenda – finances and the evaluation of the Three Year Youth Plan launched at the beginning of 2012 – was hampered by the fact that relevant documents had not been circulated beforehand. Alex de la Mar, in his role as finance manager at the KNCB office, gave a comprehensive overview of the latest figures, retrospective and prospective, some related to the budget, some more forecasts.

Clearly, despite the arrival of major sponsors in 2012 such as ABN-AMRO en SMT Shipping, the KNCB’s finances are completely dominated by ICC funding. Nothing new there, of course, but this funding is increasingly being related to performance or other criteria, one of which is, for instance, the number of players in the Dutch national team who have come through their own junior system. Interestingly seven of the eleven who only the day before the meeting triumphed against the England Performance Programme Team (in effect England A) in Mumbai learned their cricket in the Netherlands.

Finally, CEO Richard Cox and cricket development manager Marike Dickmann shared the duties in giving an evaluation of the first ten months of the initial year of the ambitious Three Year Youth Plan. This has been the major success story of 2012. The downward trend with regard to youth cricket seems to have been halted and even reversed. Numbers of 9 to 12 year olds playing cricket are up, the junior season was longer than for many a year and the number of completed matches higher. And the Bilingual Cricket Schools Challenge, exposing cricket for the first time to 1000 potential new cricketers, was an unqualified success, certain to be built on in 2013, as are many of the other positive steps for youth cricket, not in the least the first victories over Ireland at under 15 (and at the same time retention of the European Championship) and under 17 level since 2004.