Last season’s beaten finalists VRA Amsterdam have named New Zealander leg-spinner Tim Muir as their coach for the coming Topklasse campaign.

The 22-year-old Muir is a former youth international, having played three ODIs and a Test against India in 2006-07. He has not yet achieved senior representative honours, although he has played four matches for Canterbury A.

A student of sport science at the University of Canterbury, he plays for East Christchurch Shirley in the premier club competition, and has also appeared for the Cavaliers, one of two Christchurch teams in Canterbury’s experimental Sunday League.

In 2008 he had a season with Bridon in the Bassetlaw and District League in Nottinghamshire.

He will be joined in VRA’s squad by South Australian batsman Tom Cooper, one of the two Dutch passport holders who will controversially take part in this season’s Topklasse competition as well as being available for the national side.

With VRA already including Dutch internationals Peter Borren, Eric Szwarczynski and Atse Buurman, they may be one of the first sides in line to rearrange league matches when their leading players are on national team duty.

The Amsterdam club will also welcome the return of Steven Lubbers, who will be looking to raise the performance of the second side, languishing in the lower reaches of the Overgangsklasse.

Now just short of his 57th birthday, Lubbers fulfilled a similar role at Hermes-DVS last season, helping their second team to the title in the other section of the Overgangsklasse from that in which VRA played. He spent a season with VRA in 2003, when the club’s second side was still in the Eerste Klasse.

He will be joined at the club by his 25-year-old son Reinder, a former Dutch youth player who appeared for Salland in the Second Division last year.