The papers for this Thursday’s winter General Meeting of the KNCB give less indication than usual of where the pressure points are likely to be, or what specific issues can be expected to cause most concern to club delegates.

Much attention, though, might be expected to focus on the domestic competitions, which went through a fairly far-reaching remake last season and gave rise to a certain amount of dissatisfaction as a result. There may be perilous rocks and shoals lurking under the bland surface of an item which reads ‘ evaluation of 2010 season/ proposal for 2011 season/ 2011 regulations’ .

There has, of course, been the usual post-season discussion among the Topklasse clubs, who will no doubt have their own views about what should happen next year. One of the sources of discontent in 2010, however, was that decisions pushed through by the big clubs were also applied further down the system, without consultation and with some fairly unhappy results.

There is, unfortunately, no formal, structural mechanism for a wider consultation, and a general meeting is scarcely the most convenient forum for effective decision-making about such questions as whether play-offs should be retained, and whether they should also relate to promotion/relegation matters.

There have been rumblings about some much more root-and-branch changes, such as throwing the rules about player eligibility wide open, or switching the main domestic competitions from Sunday to Saturday, but of these there is no sign, and it is hard to believe that the Board would bring forward such proposals without any supporting documentation.

More than ever, one regrets the demise of the TCN (Top Cricket Nederland) group, which was during its brief existence the principal engine of change in Dutch cricket’s domestic set-up. While it ruffled feathers at times, its consultative and consensual approach led to the restructuring introduced last season, and had it remained in existence some of the dafter features of the new set-up’s implementation might well have been avoided.

The Bond has, it is true, had a working party on the competition regulations, under the chairmanship of secretary Jacques Mulders, in place since the end of October, and they can be expected to bring the first fruits of their discussions to the meeting. But again, there will be a great deal of work to be done if their ideas – whatever they prove to be – are to be implemented in 2011.

Another working party has been engaged in developing proposals for a new Club Charter scheme, potentially crucial for the future development of the game in the Netherlands, and that, too, features on Thursday’s agenda, though without any concrete indication of what those proposals are likely to be.

Financial matters traditionally occupy a great deal of KNCB general meetings’ time and attention, and delegates on Thursday will be invited to consider the budget for 2011. With 60% of the Bond’s income still coming from ICC sources and sponsorship running at modest levels, the financial situation remains both relatively stable and necessarily unadventurous, and in an overall budget of €1.9m. treasurer Peter van Wel is estimating an operating loss next year of under €2.5k. – effectively a balanced budget.

His projected outcome for 2010 is a profit of €127k., €100k. better than initially expected and largely the result of higher-than-budget income from the ICC and NOC*NSF (the Dutch Olympic Committee) and the sponsorships which CEO Richard Cox has been able to bring in for the men’s and women’s national sides. But with no main sponsor in 2011 and the World Cup looming, it’s hardly surprising that as things stand any available resources are going to be fully committed.

Elsewhere on the agenda, the increasing demands of NOC*NSF are reflected in proposals for a more effective documentation system for Bond members (which is to say, the members of all its constituent clubs), and for a code of practice aimed at preventing sexual harassment.

Behind it all, inevitably, there are the uncertainties about the ICC’s plans for the future of Associates cricket, which aren’t specifically mentioned anywhere but which are surely bound to surface at some point. This week’s announcement regarding the Intercontinental Cup suggests that the landscape is perhaps going to change less than might at one point have been feared.

Nevertheless, the threat to World Cup participation and the apparent shift towards Twenty20 cricket have profound implications for the future of the Dutch game both internationally and domestically, and it would be strange if the bigger picture played no part in Thursday’s discussions.