The ICC has confirmed the approval of Voorburg’s Westvliet ground as The Netherlands’ latest ODI venue, joining the VRA ground in Amstelveen and VOC’s Hazelaarweg in Rotterdam as the third Dutch venue with this status on a permanent basis.

With the turf square at Westvliet, laid in the autumn of 2008, in use for the first time this season, an ICC inspection team comprising referee Alan Hurst and pitch consulant Andy Atkinson revisited the ground during Voorburg’s Hoofdklasse match against Sparta 1888 on Sunday, and then made a positive recommendation to the ICC.

The decision clears the way for Westvliet to be used, along with Amstelveen and Hazelaarweg, for the World Cricket League Division 1 tournament in July, as well as extending the KNCB’s range of options in organising an increasingly complex – and expensive – programme of international matches.

Westvliet will also become The Netherlands’ fifth first-class ground, joining the two ODI venues together with Het Schootsveld in Deventer and Maarschalkerweerd in Utrecht, when it hosts an Intercontinental Cup match against Zimbabwe later in July.

The admission of Voorburg to the ODI club means that the provisional approval of Het Schootsveld – a fail-safe measure in case anything went awry in the build-up to the World Cricket League – now lapses and the ground reverts to its former status. But it will again host a first-class match when the Dutch play their Intercontinental Cup match against Scotland there on 10-13 June.

Considerable work has been done on the ground in recent months, with the KNCB and the local authority combining forces with the Salland club. One improvement has been the installation of a new scoreboard.

KNCB chief executive Richard Cox welcomed the news, saying: ‘We are delighted to have worked in close partnership with VCC to support their quest for ODI status, and we look forward to them hosting matches in the World Cricket League this summer. This news has come on the back of a hard winter’s work by officials of the club and KNCB to pull this together.

‘We will now be turning our attentions to Salland in Deventer to ensure that they too are awarded this status, so that Dutch Cricket has four grounds of international status for domestic, European and world cricket, allowing us to profile the game to new levels.’

With Excelsior’s Thurlede ground in Schiedam also coming on stream, hosting two Clydesdale Bank 40 League matches later in the summer, The Netherlands has seen a significant improvement in the range of venues available for major fixtures.

The inspectors also took advantage of their presence in the country last Sunday to look in at the Amsterdamse Bos, where they saw the VRA ground at its picturesque best for the Clydesdale Bank 40 match between the Orange Lions and Middlesex.

Photo: Fred Reman