Excelsior ’20 Schiedam has announced that its player-coach for the 2011 season will be 30-year-old Australian Mark Cleary, who will return after a one-year absence to play his fifth season with the club.

A right-arm pace bowler and aggressive left-handed batsman, Cleary played for Excelsior between 2006 and 2009 and was consistently the outstanding allrounder in the competition, making 2996 runs at an average of 48.32 with six centuries and taking 124 wickets at 12.39.

He has returned this season to his native Victoria, playing one Sheffield Shield match and three one-day games for the state side. He was also in the Australian team which won the Hong Kong Sixes tournament in Novermber.

In all, Cleary has taken 148 first-class wickets at 31.67 and 87 in List A games at an average of 32.64. He also has one first-class century to his credit, for South Australia against Tasmania in Adelaide in 2005-06.

Cleary’s return poses an interesting problem for the KNCB, since at the end of the 2009 season he received a five-match suspension, with one of those five suspended for a year, after disciplinary breaches in a Hoofdklasse match and at the finals of the Twenty20 Cup.

The player had already returned to Australia by the time the Discipline Committee imposed the penalty on 25 August, and in principle he still has to serve that suspension.

It is understood, however, that the Bond has received legal advice to the effect that there is nothing in the regulations to require that the suspension is restricted to the Netherlands, and since it is impossible to establish whether Cleary served it in Australia, he must be allowed to play from the start of the season. The Board has yet to make a decision on the matter.

Having dominated the Topklasse throughout last season only to lose to VRA Amsterdam in the championship final, Excelsior will be delighted to have Cleary back in the side.

The club has already revealed that its 2011 squad will also be strengthened by the acquisition of Danish international wicketkeeper-batsman and former captain Fred Klokker. Klokker, who was a contemporary of Excelsior skipper Daan van Bunge at the MCC Young Cricketers, has played several matches for Warwickshire and Derbyshire.