Kweek! Good to see you.
It must be gutting to see the Dutch fall off the top table given their history and some of their players.
It hurts like a b****
Been meeting up with various Dutch cricket buddies in preperation of our tour to Brighton and me becoming a board member at my club.
We've all been discussing our dissapointment and how much it hurts.
Losing ODI status means that the essential funding is cut, the funding is needed for the professionalisation of tthe Dutch XI and to activly spread the sport in a culture which doesn't have the time for this game anymore.
Recently (2 years) the KNCB has started spending money on active youth and recreational recruitment with various school tournaments and indoor sessions and schoolcamps. Although the numbers of the last 2 years still aren't that promising, over time I'm sure this sort of recruitment will pay of.
(Schools playing other schools in a sport is sort of unheard of in Holland)
At this rate we are going to a model similair to Belgium and Denmark. Mostly expats and children of expats playing the sport, which directly translates into the fact that these expats are less likely to actively partake in Dutch cricket culture.
Since ODI status there has been more television attention for cricket. Euro sport actually broadcasted cricket in 2002 in the Netherlands for the first time since the BBC lost there test match license. Papers wrote about some of the matches etc. Before ODI status Dutch cricket mostly got a bad reputation due to some fights between communities on the cricket pitch with a lot of violence. That made the news. The fact Holland qualified for the 2003 world cup hardly made any impact. Maybe some local papers wrote about it but no sports broadcast on television mentioned it until the actual event.
End of rant.
OH yeah, just want to add this; **** YOU ICC.
Good to catch you here Heath
Good to see you are loyal to CW