The promise which was made earlier this year, when the Dutch weekly magazine Cricket folded after a 79-year history, will be fulfilled in two weeks’ time with the publication of the Netherlands’ first Cricket Jaarboek.

Published by former Cricket publisher Jeroen van Bergen, subsidised by the KNCB and edited by former Bond Chief Executive Maarten Westermann, the 132-page year book will incorporate the annual statistical Kleefstra Almanac, but it will include a great deal more than that: a team including Ruud Onstein, Jan Balk, Jacob-Jan Esmeijer, Ingrid van der Elst, and CricketEurope’s Rod Lyall and Sander Tholen have combined to ensure that the volume gives a full record of 2010 in words and pictures.

In order to reach the widest possible audience both at home and abroad, the Cricket Jaarboek will be fully bilingual, with all the texts published in both Dutch and English.

Articles include interviews with the KNCB’s CEO Richard Cox, national captain Peter Borren and former captain Jeroen Smits, reviews of the programmes of the national sides and the domestic competitions, and special pieces about the unique role of Schiedam in Dutch cricket and the rise of Dosti Amsterdam, the club which has been promoted to the Topklasse for 2011.

Editor-in-chief Maarten Westermann said last week that he was confident that the Jaarbook would prove to be the first in a long series, and that it would find a place on bookshelves and coffee-tables in many countries as well as in the home of every Dutch cricket-lover.

‘I ceased to be CEO of the Bond in 2008,’ he said, ‘but that did not mean that I gave up my interest in Dutch cricket, and in my profession as journalist I have continued to follow the development of the game.

‘When I was working for the KNCB I constantly received enquiries from outside the Netherlands about our cricket, and it therefore seemed an obvious move to make the Jaarboek a bilingual publication.’

Westermann added that it was particularly gratifying that with the inauguration of the new annual it had been possible to extend the eighty-year history of the Kleefstra Almanac, which first saw the light of day in 1931.

Anyone wishing to obtain a copy of the Cricket Jaarboek 2010, which will cost €19.50 plus packing and postage, should in the first instance e-mail Jeroen van Bergen at info@jeroenvanbergen.nl. They will then receive an invoice, on payment of which the book will be sent.