If one of the objectives of the restructuring of Dutch domestic cricket was to make the top division more consistently competitive, then the evidence of the first half of the first phase in the new Topklasse is that it has been a success.
With just one match remaining to be played before the halfway point – Saturday’s rescheduled game between HCC and VRA Amsterdam – things are set up nicely for the mother of all battles for the top four places as the teams approach the cut-off point at the end of July.
Excelsior ’20, of course, have established a comfortable gap between themselves and the rest; unbeaten after seven matches they can be very confident of defending their title all the way to the play-offs, and it will take something dramatic even for them to have to surrender their top spot and with it home advantage in the majority of their second-phase games.
But that apart, everything remains up for grabs: currently in sixth place after a disappointing run of three successive defeats, VRA are only four points off second place, and that would be reduced to two were they to beat HCC on Saturday.
Even Quick Haag, still without a win and anchored at the bottom of the table, have demonstrated with two agonisingly narrow defeats, by four runs to Rood en Wit and then by 1 wicket to HCC, that they aren’t far off returning to the sort of form which saw them in the play-offs in each of the past three seasons, and we can anticipate a great battle between them and ACC – and, unless they improve pretty sharpish, VRA – to avoid the relegation series against the winners of the Hoofdklasse.
On the other hand, overseas players continue to dominate, especially in the batting. Of the top 16 leading run-scorers, ten are player-coaches or exchange players, and only three (Daan van Bunge, Nick Statham and Henk-Jan Mol) are Dutch-produced. This can scarcely be encouraging for the selectors as they survey the scene with the latter part of the summer in mind.
But the three remaining three leading batsmen include two who are, or are about to be, eligible to play for The Netherlands: the Rood en Wit pair Jarrod Englefield and Shahbaz Bashir, who have both been instrumental in seeing their side into third place on the table. Both should soon be coming into contention for national honours.
The bowling statistics are a little more promising, with only seven of the top 16 coaches or exchange players. Shahbaz is currently the leading wicket-taker, closely followed by former international Ben Goedegebuur, whose return to VOC Rotterdam has seemingly given him a new impetus with the ball. Maurits Jonkman, too, has been bowling well, as has another former international in Adeel Raja, who as an off-spinner has carried the challenging task of opening the bowling for VRA.
It will no doubt take time for the full implications of the new structure to filter through, and the restructuring needs to be given time. It’s therefore alarming to hear some voices calling for a return to a ten-team top division at the end of this season: quite apart from the fact that this would involve a retrospective change in the rules, it would threaten to make Dutch cricket a laughing-stock, unable or unwilling to carry through reforms which were hard won in an exhaustive process of consultation.
And it only takes a few minutes’ analysis of the statistics to realise that even with a reduction in the number of teams to eight, there is a disturbingly small pool of players of genuinely top quality available to the clubs.
Getting the domestic competitive structures right is only part of the answer to the problems facing Dutch cricket: improving youth development and a more extensive and testing international fixture list are also important.
But the Topklasse is a step in the right direction, and everything is set for a thrilling climax to the season.