The glory days of the Amsterdamse Cricket Club (ACC) were immediately after World War II, when they won the national championship six times in seven years between 1948 and 1954. They have spent a lot more time in the Eerste Klasse than the top flight over the past quarter-century, and before last year their previous three promotions – in 1997, 2004 and 2007 – had lasted just one season.

So a mid-table finish last season was an achievement in itself, and ACC chairman Guido Dukker is determined that it should signal the beginning of a new era of success for the club.

In addition to their first team, ACC fielded three other sides in the main KNCB competition in 2009, along with one team in each of the Zami and Zomi leagues and a promotion-winning side in the Women’s Eerste Klasse. They also entered a total of five youth teams in the age groups between under-9 and under-13.

In Dukker’s view, long-term success is a question of building a solid structure from the ground up.

‘We’ve spent the past few years consolidating after our move from the Amsterdamse Bos to Het Loopveld,’ he says, ‘and now we need to build on that. ‘The only way to create a sound youth department is to start with the youngest age groups – so far we’ve been concentrating on kids from seven to nine, but we now have a strong group of under-13s, and over the next few years we want to see them move up to under-18 and into the senior teams.’

The desire to build up a strong junior base lies behind the decision to bring in coach Ryan Maron, who runs a cricket academy in South Africa. Maron moved from VRA last season, and his 611 Hoofdklasse runs helped to keep the side in the top division.

‘But we want to strengthen our coaching set-up more generally,’ Dukker adds, ‘and we’re very pleased that players like Mudassar Bukhari, Rehan Younis, Bas van der Heijde and Ajit Kamboj are all doing their Level 2 coaching courses. That will help guarantee that our youth teams continue to develop.’

A steady stream of young players is vital if one of ACC’s key problems, the fact that its teams are visibly ageing, is to be solved. Dukker notes that many of the club’s current players are in the latter stages of their careers.

‘And infusing new blood remains a real challenge,’ he points out. ‘Most kids who take up the game come from cricketing families, and we have to expand beyond that catchment area. If we don’t expand, there’s no chance of achieving a sustained position.’

He is in no doubt that one of the most important reasons for the long, slow decline in cricket’s popularity in The Netherlands is the disappearance of cricket from the BBC, whose output is received across a wide swathe of the country.

‘We have to get the sport onto TV,’ he insists, ‘and the KNCB has to use all its influence, and pull in whatever support the ICC can offer, to make that possible. Most people never see cricket in their living-rooms any more, and we must change that.’

Although they are not formally linked, ACC has a strong historical relationship with AFC, one of the leading amateur football clubs in Amsterdam, and this does help to some degree with the recruitment of junior players.

The ACC chairman’s more ambitious plans include two major projects for the future: creating a turf square at Het Loopveld, and establishing a purpose-built indoor facility, comparable with the one owned by VOC Rotterdam.

‘We’re very keen to put in a turf square. The ground would need to be widened a bit, but it’s definitely part of our medium-term ambition.

As for the need for an indoor facility in Amsterdam: ‘It’s not good enough,’ Dukker says, ‘that national squads always have to travel to Rotterdam to train, and it would be great if we could work with other Amsterdam clubs to create an indoor centre in this city.’

Co-operation at regional level is something that Dukker is keen to encourage, although he does not underestimate the difficulties.

‘We need to work together more if the game is to develop,’ he says. ‘We have a good relationship with Rood en Wit in Haarlem, and for a couple of years we put out an Under-18 side jointly with Quick Haag.

‘But such initiatives grow out of good working relationships between individuals, and they can only happen in a situation of mutual trust. We have to be prepared to redirect some of our energy to the common good.’

In two other areas, Dukker is something of an iconoclast. ‘If we’re serious about building up junior cricket,’ he argues, ‘we should look at shifting the youth programmes to Sundays, even if it means moving the main senior competitions to Saturday.

‘As the football and hockey seasons intrude more and more into the summer children have to choose which sport they want to play, and the conflict could to some extent be avoided if youth cricket were played on Sunday.’

He would also like to see a radical rethink of the existing rules about eligibility for the top domestic divisions, which are designed to exclude ‘cricket tourists’ and require players to be resident in the country by 15 February.

‘Some years ago, Erik Holierhoek of Excelsior and I put forward a proposal to require any team to have at least six players with a Dutch passport,’ he observes, ‘and apart from that leaving eligibility open.

‘Why shouldn’t a guy who moves to The Netherlands after 15 February be allowed to play? The existing rules just create problems, and clubs are pretty good at finding ways round them.

‘What are we protecting our competition from? We say we don’t want to go down the basketball route, with the importation of lots of foreign players, but has Dutch basketball suffered as a result? Are Dutch kids and the media avoiding the game as a result?

‘A more attractive competition attracts sponsors and the media, and more money brings in kids and their parents. The current regulations feel unnatural. We have to open our minds to change.’