The Bertus de Jong Column

Empty Promises, Hollow Victories

Peter Borren doesn't drop many catches. He's taken 109 of them for the Netherlands in his career, exactly as many as Wesley Barresi in fact– who has the distinct advantage of being their first choice wicket keeper.

He took another five during Zimbabwe's three-match tour two weeks ago, but he did drop one – a regulation chance at first slip off Paul van Meekeren, to reprieve Craig Ervine on nil in the second game. Ervine went on to make a match-winning 77 before Borren held on to a far tougher chance - high and full off the face of the bat at extra cover.

He didn't celebrate.

Borren's team don't drop many matches either these days. Some of their wins have been as spectacular as Borren's leaping grab. Most have been as profitless. In fact if you had to sum up the story of Dutch cricket for the last few years in just five words, you could do worse that "winning all the wrong games".

In keeping with that theme the Netherlands' best all-round performance of recent times would come two days later, in the final match of the series that they had already lost. It was, nonetheless, without question the most absolutely clinical dismantling of a full member side ever performed by an associate nation; the sometimes brittle Dutch batting line-up battled their way to a total of 279 in less-than-ideal conditions, the bowlers ensured Zimbabwe got nowhere near it. The eventual 149-run margin of victory is the largest ever for an Associate over a Full Member.

Yet that statistic is destined to be perennially overlooked owing to the match's lack of ODI status, which is itself of course the result of two crucial games the Dutch did not win, against Namibia and Kenya at the World Cup Qualifier in New Zealand back in 2014.

The Dutch will take every win of course - they no longer believe in dead games. That's a lesson they learned the hard way in 2011 - when they treated the first two matches of the 2011-13 World Cricket League Championship as glorified warm-ups, not knowing that the competition would be a World Cup qualifying pathway and crucial to retaining their ODI status. They lost both games to Scotland, and the four points they dropped would prove immeasureably important.

In the end they would finish just one point behind second-placed Afghanistan in the league, with allegedly inadequate facilities in Canada for the final leg denying them their chance of claiming the number two spot.

Afghanistan would go on to be retroactively awarded promotion to the main ODI table on the strength of their second-place finish, an elevation which was of course made permanent in London two weeks ago (though cynics would suggest said retrospective promotion would never have happened had the Dutch occupied the 2nd spot).

In any event the Netherlands had missed their chance, and instead found themselves in New Zealand at the aforementioned Qualifier. They won four of their six games at the tournament, and won them convincingly.

They were, of course, the wrong games.

Group-stage losses to Namibia and Kenya meant they missed the Super Sixes by a net run rate margin of 0.03. That cost them a shot at qualifying for the 2015 World Cup, and it would cost them their ODI status - perhaps permanently.

Those two defeats saw them dropped into the second division of the World Cricket League, facing a hard slog back to the top of the associates' pile. The Dutch have since been on a quite remarkable streak, one that has seen them qualify for the main draw of the WT20 in 2014 where they recorded a comprehensive win over England, and then after sharing the trophy with Scotland at the next WT20 Qualifier they came within a missed stumping of beating Bangladesh at the tournament proper in India, only to see their campaign stymied by the elements - their match against Oman washed out and their win over Ireland again rendered moot.

Of course these 20-over acheivments count for next to nothing in the eyes of the ICC, but the Dutch have had a similarly impressive run in the 50-over format. Having won the 2015 WCL Division 2 in Namibia to reclaim their place in the WCL Championship, they have since lost only a single game in the competition.

With two rounds to go the Dutch are now in pole position and heavy favourites to claim the WCLC title, and with it the 13th spot in the ICC's planned ODI league. Slated to start after the 2019 World Cup, a berth in the league would (as originally envisaged) have guaranteed them some 36 ODI fixtures against full-member opposition over the course of three years - more than they have played in their entire history.

Or at least that was the deal up until the ICC's most recent meeting in London, which took place at the same time as the Zimbabwe series. There, it would appear, the Netherlands on-field achievements were quietly being rendered irrelevant.

KNCB Chair Betty Timmer was bafflingly sanguine when she arrived back from London in time for the final Zimbabwe match, accepting congratulations for her election to the ICC's Chief Executive's Committee (having taken the Associates' spot vacated by Ireland's Warren Deutrom) and generally downplaying the meeting's significance. Yet despite that personal feather in Timmer's cap, reports trickling out of London suggested the conference had been little less than catastrophic for Dutch cricket.

The big news to come out of the London meet – the elevation of Ireland and Afghanistan to full membership and Test Status – has generally been lauded as a step forward for the ICC toward inclusiveness and meritocracy. But it looks set to have overwhelmingly negative ramifications for the Associates left behind in both competitive and financial terms, and for the Netherlands especially.

With the prize of Test Status already handed out by fiat, the much-hyped “Test Challenge” which was to be the reward of the Intercontinental Cup winner has been duly scrapped, with the Netherlands – as the only side who could still have caught the Irish and Afghans – the only real loser.

But for the Dutch, who have no serious test ambitions in the short term, far more worrisome was the little-reported tinkering with the promised ODI league. Not only does it appear that the idea of a round-robin league has been shelved in favour of a profoundly odd quasi- pool system which would cut the number of series the 13th team can expect to play from 12 to 8, but the ICC seems to be backtracking on the idea that that team will indeed be the winner of the WCL Championship.

In a media conference call following the meeting ICC CEO David Richardson stressed that no decision had yet been taken on the qualification of the 13th team, this despite having explicitly stated in February that it would be the WCLC winner. The same is understood to have been communicated privately to the Dutch by ICC officials ahead of the meeting.

Nonetheless reports now suggest that the spot will instead go to the highest-ranked team on the Associates ODI table at an arbitrary cut-off date of the ICC's choosing, the upshot of such a move being to reduce the Netherlands from firm favourites to rank outsiders at the stroke of a pen. Effectively all of the 50-over contests that the Dutch have won for the last two years would become, once again, just the wrong games.

The sentiment around the boundary at Sportpark Westvliet ranged from incredulous fury to stoic resignation, with plenty of Dutch fans convinced that no matter what happens on the field the powers in Dubai will inevitably conspire to promote others at their expense. There was overwhelming agreement however, that the Dutch delegation in London had been fighting entirely the wrong battles.

When pressed Timmer insisted that the subject simply hadn't come up at any of the meetings she had attended. It's clear that it came up somewhere though, as the ICC's volte-face on the question makes plain. And it certainly came up at Voorburg on that Saturday, where the mood after the win was grim amongst the Dutch. Even as a contingent of Zimbabwe supporters danced and sang, having as they do the luxury of brushing off such ultimately inconsequential defeats, the local fans and functionaries rapidly disappeared.

While the Dutch team recieve congratulations from departing well-wishers, Borren looks no happier with the win than with the catch. The weather is closing in, the volunteers are already clearing away tables, and only with the greatest reluctance are the VCC staff persuaded to keep the bar open for a second and final round. As the drinks are passed round, a toast is overheard.