There were, to be brutally frank, quarters of Dutch cricket where the appointment of Richard Cox as chief executive of the KNCB was greeted with about as much enthusiasm as the election of Barack Obama received in the average Texas bar-room.

So how does the man himself view his situation as he reaches the end of his first hundred days in the job?

‘I don’t want your article to be all about me,’ he says revealingly, towards the end of a long conversation. ‘I’m a catalyst, but it’s down to other people to make things happen, and I can’t achieve anything without their help.

‘But what I will need to do is to lead from the front on many levels.’

He isn’t one to spend all his time sitting behind a desk: he’s spent some of those hundred days, unusually for a CEO, coaching ‘anything that wears a Dutch badge’, and he declares that he sees this as a job ‘in which you need to get yourself right on the front line’.

His record of achievement is, certainly, impressive enough: he has successfully ended the long-running saga of player contracts; he has secured a loan to support Dutch participation in the Clydesdale Bank 40 competition and additional funding from the ICC for a ‘value-added’ programme in preparation for next year’s World Cup; he has made significant changes in the KNCB office and tightened the way in which the staff reports to the Board; he has visited nine leading clubs and received a generally favourable response.

And for every completed action there are more in the pipeline: an audit by KNCB staff of the clubs’ current situation and future plans, which will feed into the proposed club charter scheme; the formation of a coaches’ association, an ex-internationals’ association, and a Friends of Dutch Cricket network; a thorough review of the Bond’s committee and subcommittee structure; development of links with Leicestershire and Kent as well as an existing one with Warwickshire; the creation of a commercial plan and updating of the existing three-year action plan; setting up an annual awards dinner; a touring programme of practice sessions of the national squads to raise their profile among Dutch cricket’s grassroots.

Cox is visibly grateful to the clubs he has visited for the welcome they have given him, and he notes that his approach appears to have occasioned some surprise.

‘They seemed to think I was coming from some Test-playing ivory tower,’ he says with a smile, ‘but the truth is that I’m a club cricketer through and through.

‘And I’m someone who tends to stick: I was at Warwickshire for twenty years, and with my first club for twenty-five. If a job needs doing, I’ll stay till it’s done.

‘Sometimes I’ve had the reaction: “Yeah, yeah, we’ve heard all this before.” And my answer is, “Well, I’ll be back, but next time in a tracksuit rather than a collar and tie – for me visiting clubs is what we have been doing in the UK for years as the basics of the job, and we will continue to be visible a lot, lot more. I will be back again in the summer and am now embarking on my second round of visits to the Erste Klasse clubs and others.

‘Bring it on – they are the heartbeat of the game as I know it.’

Cox’s radical changes in the way the Bond conducts its business are born of a definite ethos he brings to the job.

‘My mantra is: “be the best you can be”,’ he says, ‘and if money makes that impossible, then at least be better, and failing that, be different and innovative in order to achieve your plans and goals.’

There’s no question that financial limitations are the greatest problem facing both him and the Board, and that the absence of a major sponsorship deal is the most important single cause of those limitations.

‘We’re working hard on it,’ Cox says, ‘trying a somewhat different approach, and looking in different places and at different people and organizations from those that were tried in the past.

‘I’m hopeful that we’ll succeed before too long, and in the meantime we need to do everything we can to maximise our domestic resources. We’re fortunate in having an excellent new treasurer in Peter van Wel, who will ensure that the money we do have is very well spent. He has been involved in international business for some years and brings a wealth of experience to the KNCB – we are lucky to have him along with some other experienced board members.’

Cox acknowledges that not everything in his first hundred days has gone as smoothly as he would have liked.

‘We’ve had some tough negotiations over the international programme with the clubs which have turf pitches,’ he says, ‘and those are still ongoing. It’s an issue which is now being handled by the treasurer, and I’m hopeful that it will be settled within the next fortnight.’

And has language been a problem, given that Cox arrived in the job without a working knowledge of Dutch, and that this was seen by some as a major obstacle to appointing a foreigner to the post?

‘My understanding of the language is improving all the time,’ he replies, ‘and I now find that in areas where I’m familiar with the issues I can follow much of a discussion in a meeting.

‘And it’s interesting: when you miss a lot of what’s being said you fall back on observing other things, like body language, to get a sense of what’s going on. You see things that you might otherwise miss and it heightens your awareness of people – it has been fascinating using other senses to gain understanding.’

Given the hectic pace which he has set for himself and his colleagues, and which has to some extent been imposed by the pressure of events, Cox has not yet had an opportunity to make a sustained effort to learn the language, ‘but I’m in someone else’s country, and I obviously have to adapt.

‘It’s really a question of time and like everything else I will do it, but right now we have the biggest season that Dutch cricket has ever had on and off the field, and we have to be judged on the decisions we make and the things we do, at the grassroots and through to the men’s and women’s national teams.’

While acknowledging that he needs to adapt to the culture he finds himself in, Cox is also very clear about the changes he wants to instill in Dutch cricketing culture.

‘In playing terms,’ he says, ‘we need to become a lot tougher, even more brutal. We saw in Dubai last month that we were not quite good enough and that we need to do “world class basics” in everything we do. This game isn’t complicated; it’s just about being world class at the simple things!

‘We miss a Jeroen Smits on and off the park. He was the kind of player you want in your team, and not in the opposition – a dog, constantly yapping at your heels. We need to start breeding more of that kind of ethos, from Dutch Lions and Lionesses right through to the national teams.’

For Cox, who has been listening and discussing with the coaching staff in recent weeks, that means a different approach to everything we do.

‘We’ve agreed that we want to take character, attitude and fitness as the key factors,’ he says, ‘even ahead of cricketing ability.

‘Character means the way you are in your daily life on and off the park – level headed, mature, responsible and so on whether things are going for or against you; attitude means staying focused at the critical moments of the game; and fitness means being prepared to put in the hours on your own to ensure that you’re at your peak when it’s needed.

‘I’ve seen it all over the world: players with a little less ability can achieve much more if they get those things right, and a player with all the ability in the world won’t succeed if he or she doesn’t have the right character and attitudes. I come from an environment where we won three trophies one year, two the following and another one year later – we have to adopt the winning mindset and although 5 June 2009 was a fantastic night, we need to repeat those nights regularly to be taken truly seriously.

‘We have no room for complacency. In both men’s and women’s cricket, there are plenty of challengers looming – look at Afghanistan in the men’s game, and Bangladesh among the women. They and others will race past us if we don’t keep improving and seeking new opportunities for our players – and then they have to respond.

‘Whether it’s the Dutch Lions this summer or the national teams, I will be watching everything like a hawk – whether it’s club cricket, coaches, managers, players, programmes and processes – the lot.’

So is he enjoying himself?

‘It’s been a huge life change,’ he says, ‘when you have been part of the wallpaper for twenty years at a Test Match ground to have to start again in a different country with different traditions; it will take time but at the end of the day it’s cricket and it’s the same the world over.

‘It has its problems but they are only opportunities in my eyes: to try to make a difference whilst keeping the rich heritage of Dutch cricket intact.’

‘I miss home,’ Cox admits, ‘of course I do, but within a week people were saying to me that I kept referring to “we this” and “we that” – quick loyalty is vital and I am steadily making the transition.

‘It’s an exciting challenge, and we’re embarking on what should be the best year in the history of Dutch cricket: new forms of domestic competition, both men and women competing in English county competitions, the World Cricket League, and then the World Cup.’

That being the case, one has to admit that the new Dutch CEO is confronted with no shortage of opportunities. And he’s showing every sign of making the most of them.