Browsing in a Schiphol Airport bookshop on my way to a CricketEurope meeting last week, I happened across the Christmas number of the glossy Sportsweek. It's the leading Dutch general sports weekly, and this one's labelled 'Euforie & Drama: Sportjaar 2009'. Surely, I thought, Oranje's stunning victory over England at Lord's on 5 June contributed quite a bit to the euphoria, and I happily handed over my €3.50. I should have known better.

It didn't come as a surprise that more than 40% of the editorial content is devoted to football, considering just how popular that sport is, or how it dominates the Dutch media. Nor did my eyebrows rise at the fact that the other featured sportsmen and women came from speed skating, cycling, swimming, gymnastics and motor sport - after all, those all have a reasonably high profile in The Netherlands. But what was astonishing was that there wasn't a single mention anywhere in the magazine's 122 pages of that amazing, historic evening. Not in the photographic review features, not in cabaret artist Youp van 't Hek's review of the year, not even in the quiz, which includes such brainteasers as 'Where did long distance runner Cor Vriend run his first marathon?' and 'Which piece of sporting equipment has a maximum length of 93 cm.?'. [A cricket bat's maximum is 96.5 cm., so we missed out even there.] It is as if the heroes of Lord's never existed.

Given how tiny the Dutch cricket community is, such invisibility is, up to a point, understandable. But that is a vicious circle: as long as cricket is ignored in the media, promoting the sport remains incredibly difficult. It's true that in the immediate aftermatch of that sensational victory there was more attention given to the national team than ever before, but that wave dissipated within a few days. And the KNCB did not have a marketing strategy to capitalise on that attention. Did anyone make sure that the editorial team of Sportweek had the photographic material which might have persuaded them to refer back to 5 June in their annual review?

Attempts were made to get the side nominated for the NOS Team of the Year award on Dutch television, but the panel of sportswriters who drew up the shortlist thought otherwise, and they lost out to dressage riders, volleyball players, and the national women's freestyle swimming relay team. A few moments from the climax of the England match, included in a review of the year, was the only recognition of one of the finest victories in Dutch sporting history. Our hopes were raised when one of the presenters, Dione de Graaff, started talking about something she 'didn't understand at all'- that's a fairly standard Dutch response to cricket - but it turned out she meant Twitter.

The list of issues needing the KNCB's attention is formidable, but this one surely has to be near the top. A full-on marketing strategy is essential if Dutch cricket is ever to break out of its media ghetto. Let's hope the guys and girls in orange give them an opportunity as golden as Lord's was before too long!

It's good to see that ICC Europe have, not before time, instituted a Scorers' Panel for future European tournaments. I admit to having a personal interest in this - I've been a scorer myself for more than half a century - but it seems to be a widespread truth that scorers are a neglected minority at almost every level of the game.

Long-serving Surrey scorer Keith Booth caused a mild flutter last month when he complained bitterly about the treatment handed out to the scorers at this year's World Twenty20 tournament, and resigned from the Association of County Cricket Scorers in protest at their failure to take on the ECB about their treatment of the profession more generally. As with other aspects of what I think of as 'paracricket' - the various functions which surround the game and make it possible - officialdom is inclined to assume that everything is fine, even when it palpably isn't.

Scorers, whose role is defined in Law 4, form an integral part of a team with the umpires, and they are responsible for ensuring that the game is fully and accurately documented. Even at as high a level as the World Cricket League Division 1, it cannot be guaranteed that this will go without a hitch: there was one match in Nairobi where it took several hours to work out who had won, and in a tight finish everybody needs to be sure of the actual situation. You can't absolutely prevent human error - everyone makes mistakes, which means that good communication between the two officially-appointed scorers is essential - but you can demand that tournament organisers and team managements ensure that those involved are competent, understand their role, and take their task seriously.

Too often in the past, countries have turned up to European tournaments, especially youth tournaments, without a scorer, and haven't even bothered to let the organisers know that they'll need someone local. It's not unheard of for even leading Associates to turn up without a scorebook, never mind someone to fill it in. You can't usually rely on players or supporters to take on the job and do it properly: at youth tournaments the players often have little experience, and quickly lose concentration or interest. Attempts to persuade the national associations to include a scorer in their squad have been largely fruitless (for understandable financial reasons), and the penalties for non-compliance have likewise failed to get results.

So it's a big step forward that there will now be a recognised panel of scorers, just as there is for umpires. And one of its side effects will be that it will show up which countries have a solid basis of competence, and which need to put some effort into developing this important but sorely neglected aspect of the sport. After all, there's a great deal of enjoyment to be had from recording the game, and clubs and national associations could do much more to recruit willing volunteers. Apart from anything else, many a prospective cricket widow, and perhaps a few prospective cricket widowers, have realised that taking on the scorer's role was a pretty good defence strategy! Others of us, of course, are just plain nuts. 1

On Christmas Eve, my subscriber's copy of the KNCB's Kleefstra Almanack dropped into the letterbox. As it happens, I'd already picked up a copy at the recent general meeting of the Bond, but it's the thought that counts. And the Almanack is such a remarkable document that it's well worth having two.

OK, Wisden it isn't. There are 66 pages, not 1600, and the colour of its cover changes every year, unlike the unfailing chrome yellow of the Cricketers' Bible. But that's actually quite handy when you're sorting through the slim A4 volumes, something you're bound to do from time to time if you're trying to write seriously about Dutch cricket.

The title is, of course, a tribute to the almanack's founding genius, Brinio Kleefstra, and it still bears the hallmarks of his statistical foundations. In addition to the usual tables of averages, therefore, including the statistics for international teams, every division from the Men's and Women's Hoofdklasse to Division 4B, the Zami, Zomi, Veterans' and Under-18 youth competitions (it's almost true that all human life is here), league tables and lists of prize-winners, there are also the very strange, Kleefstra-inspired annual profit-and-loss accounts for the top divisions, from which it is possible to see that in last season's Hoofklasse HBS Den Haag conceded only 58 byes and leg-byes, by contrast with VRA Amsterdam's 140, and that champions Excelsior '20 Schiedam had by far the worst record in wides and no balls (287). As against that, they only conceded 18.8 runs per wicket and scored 27.6, which undoubtedly tells us a lot more about how they came to lift the trophy.

It's not all about the numbers. Harry Oltheten contributes another of his fascinating historical articles, this time on the matches between English invitation sides and Dutch teams organised between 1883 and 1902 by Baroness Marguèrite van Brienen at the family estate at Clingendael, near Den Haag. These had, as Oltheten argues, a key role in the development of Dutch cricket, and they reflect the aristocratic, Anglophile roots of the game in this country.

At the other chronological extreme, Jeroen Smits has provided a foreword, marking the defeat of England at Lord's. '5 June 2009,' Smits writes, 'taught us that with a talented group of cricketers, a large amout of self-confidence, a bit of luck, but above all an unbelievable team effort, you can produce outstanding performances. Let's hope we don't have to wait too long for a repeat of this success.' And so say all of us!

But life is never perfect. Archive Committee chairman Alex Matthijssen describes in his introduction the battle he and his colleagues have to make the statistics as complete as possible, and as always, some of the tables are marred by the failure of clubs to complete scorecards or fill in their season's returns. When this includes VOC Rotterdam's Twenty20 Cup performances and the second team of VRA Amsterdam, it's an indication that even at the top of the Dutch club tree there is a good deal that could be improved. If and when the KNCB's club charter is introduced, this is certainly an area which will demand attention.

Fifty years ago this month, I witnessed one of the most remarkable performances I have ever seen on a cricket field. It took place at the WACA Ground in Perth over two successive weekends, and its protagonist was a 23-year-old opening batsman called Bobby Simpson. He had made his first-class debut as long ago as 1953, when still eleven days short of his seventeenth birthday, but by the end of the 1955-56 season he had only played 19 times for his native New South Wales; these were the days when NSW won the Sheffield Shield as a matter of course, and it was arguably easier to get into the Australian side than it was to play for the state.

So Simpson moved to Perth, and his form for his new state quickly began to earn him recognition. He was included in the Australian side, effectively an A team, which toured New Zealand in 1956-57, and the following season he went to South Africa, playing in all five Tests. In December 1959 he had recently returned from a Commonwealth XI visit to South Africa, so by this time he wasn't exactly unknown, and his first-class average was a respectable 41.3.

Even so, nothing in his record so far suggested the prodigiousness of what he was about to do. It just happened that, as a 16-year-old schoolboy, I was working for the first time as scorer-statistician for the ABC radio commentary team, and Simpson's feats over those twelve days were a statistician's dream. In the first match, against New South Wales, he hit a record not-out 236, the highest ever for Western Australia at that time, and added 301 with his skipper Ken Meuleman in an unbroken stand for the fifth wicket – another state record. WA dismissed NSW for 172 and 210 to win by an innings, Simpson taking five for 45 in the second innings with his leg spin.

After a three-day break, WA took on Queensland, and this time the visitors batted first. They were dismissed for 117 on the first day, demolished by the new-ball attack of Des Hoare and Ron Gaunt (once memorably spoonerised by the chief ABC commentator, Ron Halcombe, as 'Gore and Haunt'), with support from the swing bowling of Ray Strauss. Then it was Simpson's turn again, and although he took a little while to settle, he went on to hit another double century; only Meuleman's declaration, when Simpson was on 230 not out with nine wickets down, preventing him from breaking his own week-old record. It was during this knock that Halcombe produced the immortal line: 'He's just reached fifty, and let me tell you, if he stays there, they'll never get him out!'

They didn't, and a lead of 282 was enough to give WA a second successive innings victory. Simpson was never off the field throughout the two matches, an amazing achievement in itself. Apart from his magnificent strokeplay, what I remember most is the sheer relentlessness of his batting, taking a new guard as he reached each milestone and steadily destroying increasingly helpless bowlers. To be fair, neither of the opposing attacks was at full strength: with Australia touring India, NSW were without Alan Davidson, Gordon Rorke and Richie Benaud, while Queensland were missing Ray Lindwall and Ken Mackay. But that doesn't detract a jot from Simpson's performance.

He went on, of course, to have a quite extraordinary career: more than 21,000 first-class runs at an average of 56.22, one of Australia's finest Test captains, making 4869 Test runs and taking 110 catches (mostly at slip) into the bargain, and amazingly, returning to the international arena at the age of 41 when the combined effects of Kerry Packer's depradations and the indiscipline of the Ian Chappell era had Australia's cricket in ruins, and leading an inexperienced side through a home series against India and a tour of the West Indies. Though most of its players are now forgotten, his reconstitution of that Australian team was one of the foundations of the great successes of the past couple of decades.

I've had the pleasure of meeting up with him a couple of times in more recent years, once when he was managing the 1989 Australians on their British tour and I interviewed him for a Scottish local newspaper, and later in Amstelveen when he was helping the Dutch prepare for the 2005 ICC Trophy, thus playing a brief but vital role in their entering the High Performance Program. He is courteous, modest, and very, very tough. He is, for my money, one of the pillars of the game.

For those who dig around in the Kleefstra Almanack (all right, I know, an alternative might be getting a life), there are priceless gems to be mined. One such this year comes in the form of a whole series of milestones reached by the evergreen Tim de Leede, who seems determined to have as many farewells as Australian opera diva Dame Nellie Melba, though whether he'll ever have a dessert named after him is perhaps debatable. [There's a challenge: devise an appropriate De Leede tribute recipe. Submit your proposals to the Dutch forum.]

We all thought he'd played his last Hoofdklasse match in 2008, or maybe even 2007 – when he took Voorburg to the first-ever championship final – but with Voorburg battling against relegation he came back towards the end of this past season, appearing in six Hoofdklasse matches and the three play-offs against Rood en Wit and hitting a splendid century in one of the latter. With these efforts he passed 12,000 Hoofdklasse runs and 475 wickets; when the play-off matches are taken into account, he now has a record 19,204 runs at 'Hoofdklasse niveau' (including international matches and other games deemed to be of equivalent status to top-flight domestic cricket) and has taken 809 wickets, the most by any Dutch player since the introduction of limited-overs cricket.

Now 41, and with Voorburg playing in the second division next season ('Hoofdklasse niveau' is presumably about to become 'Topklasse niveau'), De Leede is perhaps unlikely to become the first to reach 20,000 runs at this level, but personally I wouldn't bet against it. Should the Voorburgers make a quick return to the top flight – or even reach the end-of-season play-offs – it wouldn't come as a surprise to see him once again donning the royal blue and red of the club to which he has given so much. And he'll surely want to play at least a few games on the new turf square which he has, literally and metaphorically, watered with his sweat.

It doesn't come as a surprise that my colleague Ger Siggins has nominated Ireland's momentous victory over Pakistan in the 2007 World Cup as the Game of the Decade. Having covered the match live – though at a considerable distance – for CricketEurope, I remember very well the thrill that it produced, all the more potent because of the suggestions which had been made by certain journalists that the Associate qualifiers had no business being there and would devalue the tournament.

But for sheer drama, I would claim that The Netherlands' defeat of England at Lord's last June surpassed even that tumultuous day. At 100 without loss after eleven overs England were creaming it, and it took a monumental effort by the Dutch bowlers to peg them back, conceding only 62 from the remaining nine and taking wickets regularly enough to break the flow. As Jeroen Smits said afterwards, by the changeover the momentum was with the Dutch, and that was something that had seemed very unlikely forty minutes earlier.

Even so, 163 was a target that would take The Netherlands into territory uncharted in their brief Twenty20 international history, and it would be against an attack which was accustomed to operating at a level or two above what the Dutch were used to. Yet from the moment that Darron Reekers smashed Ryan Sidebottom for the first six of the tournament – remarkably, England had not managed one, not even when Wright and Bopara were apparently in charge – it was obvious that Smits's men were by no means overawed by the occasion.

Wickets fell at fairly regular intervals, but every time a new batsman came to the crease he regained the initiative by smacking a boundary, and the Dutch demonstrated their skill and nerve and rode their luck all the way to Stuart Broad's final over, which began with seven still needed for victory and Ryan ten Doeschate and Eddie Schiferli at the crease. Five singles, scampered against signs of panic in the English ranks and amidst almost unbelievable tension, brought it down to the final delivery, with one needed to level the scores and go to a Super Over, two for a Dutch victory.

The moment is captured for ever in a classic YouTube clip: Schiferli's mistimed blow back to the bowler, Broad's throw at the stumps as they race through for the single, and the exuberant leaping in mid-run as the batsmen complete the second. It was a script that would be rejected as too improbable by any production company worth its salt, but thousands of us witnessed it with varying degrees of disbelief.

Ireland's win at Sabina Park, of course, was also not lacking in drama, and when the Irish were 70 for four and then 113 for seven chasing 133 it seemed as if Pakistan might save themselves from the consequences of their embarrassing batting collapse. But Kevin O'Brien and Trent Johnston reached their target with 32 balls to spare, and it had been evident for a long time that Pakistan's only hope was to bowl their opponents out. It was magnificent, but it did not provide the sensational climax of 5 June 2009.

In terms of the long-term effect, there is no doubt that the Ireland victory had a greater impact on the development of Irish cricket, and indeed on Associates cricket more generally, and you can argue that a win in a World Cup ODI is more telling than one in a Twenty20 tournament. But viewed as a match, that game at Lord's had it all, and it's not only my unbounded enthusiasm for Dutch cricket that makes it my candidate for Game of the Decade.

When The Netherlands travel to Scotland next July for a one-off ODI against Bangladesh – the neutral venue has presumably been arranged to suit the convenience of the tourists, who are scheduled to play Scotland two days previously – there may be a lot more at stake than the possibility of a first-ever ODI victory for the Dutch over Full member opposition. But whether that turns out to be the case will depend on developments elsewhere.

Before that game, The Netherlands are down to play five ODIs against fellow Associates: three against Kenya in February, and two against Scotland in June. Now, the requirements for inclusion in the main ICC international rankings table, which Ireland achieved in 2007, are that an Associate must have beaten two Full members, or with one victory over a Full member must have won at least 60% of their ODIs against fellow Associates and Affiliates over the past three years. The current Dutch record stands at 65% (19 wins from 29 games according to the ICC table), so just two victories out of those five matches against Kenya and Scotland would keep them above the 60% level. And a win over Bangladesh would then take them into the ICC Reliance Mobile ODI Championship.

Beating the Bangladeshis will, of course, be no easy task: after losing to Canada and Kenya in the 2003 World Cup, their first since gaining Full member status, they have generally had the measure of Associate opponents, their only subsequent defeat being at the hands of Ireland during the latter's magnificent 2007 World Cup run. They have registered fairly comfortable victories over Ireland, Kenya, Scotland, Canada and Bermuda in recent years, demonstrating the value of regular competition against better sides.

But the Dutch will take some comfort from the fact that they have a 4-3 winning record against the Bangla Tigers, dating back to the 1982 ICC Trophy. Their only contest since Bangladesh achieved Test status was an unofficial warm-up game in Colombo before the 2002 Champions' Trophy, which the Tigers won by four wickets, having dismissed The Netherlands for 162. Both sides, however, have come a long way since then.

Now here's a thing: most of us are aware that Afghanistan have played three official ODIs: one against Scotland to decide third place at the World Cup Qualifier, that is, after they had finished in the top six and secured ODI status for the next four years, and two against The Netherlands towards the end of the European season. Imagine my surprise, therefore, when I found in checking my facts for yesterday's blog post, that according to the ICC Associate/ Affiliate Ranking Table, they have played eight matches, not three.

The reason for this is explained below the table on the ICC website (it takes a bit of finding, but it's there): the rankings take into account 'any non-ODIs played between the six current Associate ODI countries during the course of the 2009 ICC CWC qualifier'. I must say I find this bizarre, even by the ICC's standards. The status of the matches in that tournament was as follows:

• in the group stage, matches between the existing ODI countries (Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, Kenya, The Netherlands and Scotland) were full ODIs, while all other matches were not, being given List A status instead
• once the Super Eight and relegation play-off stage was reached, however, nothing counted as an ODI, on the somewhat opaque grounds that the old qualification period had ended after the group matches and the new one had not yet begun
• the final and the play-offs for third to sixth places, among the new qualifiers for ODI status (i.e. the former six minus Bermuda and with the addition of Afghanistan), were full ODIs, since the top six had now been settled for another four years.

This may have been stupid, but it was clear. The six matches between pairs of countries which had enjoyed ODI status since 2005 were List A matches, like everything else in the tournament, but they were not, repeat not ODIs. That was the ICC's firm ruling on the matter.

Yet now we find that those six games, plus the five between Afghanistan and their fellow-qualifiers for the next four-year period, are being treated as ODIs for the purposes of the ICC's rankings. The group match between Bermuda and Afghanistan, however, is not, despite the fact that Bermuda enjoyed exactly the same status at the point at which it was played as Kenya and The Netherlands, whose games against Bermuda were ODIs and whose games against Afghanistan are being treated as if they were.

It's not difficult to find an explanation for this blatant inconsistency. Under the rankings system, once a country has played 10 'qualifying matches' it is eligible to move into the ODI Championship, provided it has two wins against Full members, or one win over a Full member and at least a 60% winning record against Associates and Affiliates. So slipping in those five extra matches accelerates Afghanistan's progress towards that target; indeed, on current plans they will pass that 10-match milestone in February.

Do I need to emphasise that this is not an attack on Afghanistan? Unfortunately, I probably do. It's not the Afghans I'm complaining about, but the ICC officials who made this weird decision. We should be used by now to the absurd ICC hype around the rise of Afghanistan, which is not the latter's fault but which has done them few favours. That takes nothing away from their own remarkable achievements, to which I've recently paid tribute. But this looks like a fiddle, and one which does the ICC no credit at all.

The ICC's annual statistical survey of its Associate and Affiliate members is a document which repays a lot of thoughtful dredging with some interesting snippets. We all agree, I take it, that the long-term success of the Global Development Program depends on bringing ever-increasing numbers of kids into the game. The expansion of cricket can scarcely rely on patterns of global migration to go on fuelling the senior ranks of the sport's developing countries.

So the ratio of youth players to seniors is a potentially useful index of the extent to which local organisations, which must mean both national bodies and clubs, are succeeding in reaching out to kids and bringing them into the game. These figures can readily be obtained from the ICC returns, although of course we have to bear in mind that these are the numbers officially reported by governing bodies. As we have recently noted in the case of Afghanistan, there can be a huge difference between the figures provided to the ICC and the situation which is claimed actually to exist on the ground.

Still, the latest figures, from 2008, do provide plenty of food for thought. I've only looked at the categories of senior and youth players, since the third element – 'junior involvement'ó is so vague that it is very difficult to interpret. Generally speaking, one might be looking for the junior numbers to be significantly larger than those for seniors, since they form the base of a pyramid in a healthy and expanding organisation. And indeed, there are some countries where this is spectacularly the case.

Top of the league comes Malawi, which reports 225 senior players and 2520 juniors, a ratio of 11.2 kids for every adult player. OK, the ratio can be exaggerated by a low senior base, but that's true of many other countries which don't begin to come close to the Malawian achievement. Others which are evidently making great strides include Vanuatu (8.21 juniors per senior player), Namibia (7.875), Indonesia (7.67), Malaysia (4.75) and the Bahamas (4.56).

At the other end of the scale, the wooden spoon is decisively claimed by the USA, which boasts 15,180 senior players and just 810 juniors, a ratio of 0.05 (anything below 1.00 means you have fewer juniors than seniors, which can't be a good sign). The UAE comes in at 0.16, Norway at 0.18, Canada at 0.32, Afghanistan at 0.27, and The Netherlands at 0.74.

There are some interesting regional differences: what can explain the fact that Malaysia has nearly five times as many youth players as seniors, while its neighbour Singapore has only 375 juniors to 1305 seniors, a ratio of 0.29? Is this about demographics, or are there policy issues involved? And while the UAE has one of the poorest records, and Bahrain, Kuwait and Oman are all on the wrong side of the balance sheet, Qatar has a very favourable ratio of 3.75. Might Qatar be a model for its neighbours to follow?

There were twelve countries which reported no junior players at all. Many of these are fairly new to the cricket family, and no doubt there are kids who play in senior teams, but what are we to make of the fact that in Luxembourg, Malta and Portugal there is apparently no youth cricket? What does that suggest about the long-term future of cricket in those countries?

These comparisons do, of course, only tell us so much, but it is certainly significant that very low ratios are often found in countries where the national team's heavy reliance on expatriate players is a legitimate subject of concern. More generally, it's worrying that of the ICC's five regions, only the two smallest, Africa and East Asia-Pacific, have more juniors than seniors. Asia and Europe have an almost identically low ratio (0.88), despite receiving 66% of the global development funding between them, while the Americas scores only 0.26.

The ICC's Strategic Plan for 2006-10 spoke ambitiously of switching 'from expansion to addressing the quantity and quality of participation, and its sustainability'. It aimed to do this through, among other things, focusing on 'initiatives which can transfer junior involvement into competitive junior playing competitions', recognising and planning for 'the importance of retaining junior players through to senior level', and encouraging 'the introduction of cricket programs for boys and girls in more schools, clubs, villages and townships'.

To the extent that the average annual increase in global junior numbers in the previous planning period, 2002-06, was around 6000, and rose to 7350 over the first two years of the current one (an improvement of 22%), we might conclude that this is to some degree being achieved. But the national breakdown reveals that much, much more needs to be done.

One measure of a club's health is the regularity with which juniors graduate successfully through the senior ranks and into the first team. But another, less frequently considered, is the presence in the second team of former top players who have retired from first-team cricket but go on playing out of love of the game and a desire to help develop the youngsters.

Among the leading Dutch clubs, two are outstanding in the latter respect: Quick Haag and Hermes-DVS Schiedam maintain a healthy balance in their second teams between promising youth talent and players with a wealth of Hoofdklasse, sometimes even international, experience.

Quick Haag 2, for example, fielded, at various times last season, Nolan Clarke, Marco Hoogwater, Jan Kramer, Alex Pototsky and Dick Vierling, with more than 1000 Hoofdklasse appearances between them. And Hermes were able to call on the experience of Lou Borrani, Steven Lubbers, Frank Nijman, Robin ter Plegt and Danny Thampinayagam, who could muster more than 1200. Other than that, former players from the top flight were few and far between, although Hermes' local rivals Excelsior '20 fielded Carl Schewe and Andrè van Troost, and Rood en Wit could sometimes call on Maarten Barnhoorn and Johnny Ravenhill.

It would be difficult to exaggerate the value for young cricketers on the way up of playing amongst these veterans. Imagine what it was like for Quick's 15-year-old (as he was at the start of last season) James Gruijters, opening with Clarke, a sprightly 60-year-old whose CV includes first-class cricket for Barbados and 99 international appearances for The Netherlands. Clarke has never been known for his reticence, and raising your game to meet his exacting standards is a challenge calculated to establish once and for all whether you've got what it takes. The 45-year age difference in an opening pair must, incidentally, constitute some kind of Dutch, possibly even world, record.

In a Dutch context, the Hermes and Quick cases may seem exceptional, but elsewhere in the world such a pattern is not unusual. So the question is not how they do it, but why rivals like VOC Rotterdam and VRA Amsterdam are unable to do likewise.

I think it is yet another indication of the amateur nature of cricket in The Netherlands, compounded by the shallowness of the playing pool. Good players are able to continue in the first team for as long as they like, largely unchallenged by lean and hungry youngsters half their age. And when they do finally decide to call it a day, they call it a day with a vengeance. They've made big demands on their families while they've been playing, and they've often reached a point in their careers where work is making ever-greater demands on them. So giving up one day a weekend to cricket no longer seems so attractive, and they'd rather spend any leisure time they have playing a round of golf than putting something back into the sport which has occupied so much of their time in the past.

Quite honestly, you can't blame them. But, as VRA chairman John Wories recently observed, the second team is a vital element in the development of young cricketers. Hermes and Quick Haag are indeed fortunate that they have the Borranis and Hoogwaters to contribute to that development, and if they can figure out what the component is in their clubs' composition which keeps them involved, they should consider bottling and selling it. Unless, of course, they prefer to keep it to themselves …

My blog entry of 3 January has drawn a vigorous response from the ICC Media Department, and I'm happy to move quickly to withdraw any suggestion of impropriety in the ICC's management of its rankings system.

ICC Communications Officer James Fitzgerald points out that the procedure being followed in this case is the same as that used in 2005, when Bermuda, Canada, Ireland, The Netherlands and Scotland) first achieved ODI status.

'The main difference with the 2009 CWC Qualifier,' he continues, 'was that it happened there was only one new ODI team to get started, namely Afghanistan. Under no circumstances was favouritism being shown and your implication that ICC officials were fiddling the process is unfair and untrue. It was all in line with the recommendations provided by David Kendix, who devised all the ICC team rankings, and those matches are still not classed as ODIs but just count towards getting such Members' rankings started. These matches then drop off after the designated period as normal.

'In the CWCQ 2009, the Super Eight matches were not classified as ODIs because (1) it was simply impossible to allocate ODI grounds and officials and deal with logistics between the end of the group stage and the start of the Super Eight stage, and (2) there was an ever-changing top six on the table during this stage, so ODI status for the next day could potentially change at the end of each day (matches were included in the rankings only once the new ODI countries were decided at the end of the event and the ìstatusî of the matches were known to be between the new top six).

'During the event, Bermuda's matches against any of the old top six were ODIs in the group stage as Bermuda was still in the top six rankings until the end of that stage. At this point Afghanistan was not an ODI team so its games were not ODIs. When the time came to backdate to include group stage and Super Eight matches for inclusion on the table, Bermuda had lost its ODI status but Afghanistan had gained ODI status. This is different to the Kenya and Netherlands cases who were top six throughout. In short, the decision was entirely consistent and if it was ìweirdî, as you describe it, then it was also weird when it was applied to the teams that qualified for the 2007 CWC (but I don't recall you describing it as such at that time).

'As for the ìabsurd ICC hype around the rise of Afghanistanî, I would have thought that as a follower of Associate and Affiliate cricket you would agree that the remarkable progress made by Afghanistan cricket was deserving of public recognition in the same way that the exploits of teams like Ireland and the Netherlands have also been acknowledged. However, I can assure you that the vast majority of publicity generated by Afghanistan's successes was done so by the media, not the ICC.

'Since Afghanistan won Division 5 of the Pepsi ICC World Cricket League we have been inundated with requests for information from broadcast and print journalists from all over the world. It is information, incidentally, that we are more than happy to provide as it serves to highlight Associate and Affiliate cricket and the good work of the Pepsi ICC Development Programme. We do not control the message or the scope of that publicity and while we try to promote all our Associates' and Affiliates' successes equally, the reality is that the media outlets themselves will choose which stories to follow.'

I must admit that I was unaware that the five countries which achieved ODI status in 2005 were given a similar head-start, and acknowledge that, that being the case, there can be no question of favouritism for Afghanistan. I also agree that Afghanistan's achievements over the past eighteen months have been worthy of a great deal of recognition – indeed, I and my CricketEurope colleagues have contributed something to that recognition ourselves.

My invitation to devise a tribute recipe for Tim de Leede having apparently fallen on deaf ears, I suppose I'm morally obliged to come up with something myself. So here goes …

One of the most traditional of Dutch desserts is Haagse Bluf, a concoction with egg whites, sugar and red currant juice, red currants being a favourite Dutch fruit. So that's a starting point, but cricket being involved, we need something that combines traditional English ingredients with Dutch ones. Mincemeat, as used in British festive recipes, seems appropriate, in remembrance of those numerous opponents whose bowling have been reduced to mincemeat over the years by the De Leede bat. And since I tend to the view that there is no recipe in existence which cannot be improved by the addition of an alcoholic component, this all leads to my recipe for:

Voorburgse Bluf or, Vruchtengehakt De Leede

For the mincemeat
125 gr. coarsely grated cooking apple (Bramley or Granny Smith, according to preference)
75 gr. chopped raisins
50 gr. chopped sultanas
50 gr. currants
50 gr. chopped mixed candied peel
75 gr. soft brown sugarngrated zest and juice of Ω a lemon and Ω an orange
20 gr. chopped almonds
1 teasp. ground mixed spice
1 pinch of cinnamon
1 scant pinch of nutmeg
2 tablesp. Bessenjenever (Dutch redcurrant gin)

For the Bluf
4 egg whites
125 gr. caster sugar
4 dl. redcurrant juice (or, if you wish, 3 dl. juice and 1 dl. Bessenjenever)

For decoration
candied peel
redcurrants

If you insist, the gin can be replaced by redcurrant juice.

The mincemeat should be prepared at least a couple of days in advance. Mix all the ingredients, including the gin, and place in an airtight jar so that the flavours are thoroughly combined.
Then divide the mixture between six broad, flat dessert dishes.
Beat the egg whites with the sugar until very stiff, and then gradually add the redcurrant juice (laced or unlaced).
Cover the mincemeat with this mixture, and decorate with candied peel stumps being demolished by a redcurrant ball.

It's claimed that Haagse Bluf is so called 'because people from The Hague are full of hot air'. I couldn't possibly comment.

Anyway, I hope you enjoy it!

There has been an extremely interesting debate going on on the Dutch forum about the issue of an overseas player for the ECB Pro40 competition. I don't want to take that up directly here, partly because I set out my own view back in October (we should get someone provided the money is there to bring in a player of genuine quality), and partly because it's bound to remain a theoretical question until we know that a sponsor has been signed up.

But one of the incidental aspects of the debate has been about strike rates, which of course raises the issue of the sort of totals which might be regarded as reasonable in the 40-over competition. It's instructive, then, to look back at last season's scorecards, to see how The Netherlands' group opponents did when batting first.

Here's the tally:

• Derbyshire (2 completed 40-over innings): 259-8 v Kent (lost by 4 wickets); 214-9 v Glamorgan (lost by 5 wickets)
• Essex (3): 263-8 v Sussex (lost by 4 wickets); 224-8 v Nottinghamshire (won by 34 runs); 247-5 v Worcestershire (lost by 3 wickets)
• Gloucestershire (4): 189 in 39.5 overs v Sussex (lost by 9 wickets); 116 in 28.2 overs v Somerset (lost by 8 wickets in 18.4 overs); 184-8 v Hampshire (lost by 3 wickets); 172 in 39.4 overs v Yorkshire (lost by 8 wickets)
• Middlesex (4): 201-7 v Leicestershire (won by 27 runs); 254-3 v Glamorgan (won by 63 runs); 242-6 v Derbyshire (won by 50 runs); 220-8 v Northamptonshire (won by 78 runs)
• Northamptonshire (3): 268-7 v Glamorgan (won by 6 runs); 212-6 v Warwickshire (tied); 224-6 v Kent (won by 99 runs)
• Yorkshire (4): 232-6 v Hampshire (lost by 5 wickets); 208 in 39.4 overs v Somerset (lost by 5 wickets); 254-2 v Sussex (won by 23 runs); 187-7 v Essex (lost by 7 wickets)

One might also pause to consider that Essex chased down totals of 246 by Hampshire and 276 by Durham, winning both matches by seven wickets – and that in the space of three days!

A lot obviously depends on the quality of your attack – Middlesex could be fairly confident last season with any total over 200, while Derbyshire and Essex could make over 250 and still lose – but the general message appears to be that unless you have some exceptional bowling, you need to be getting close to a run a ball over your 40 overs if you're going to be in with a shout.

This doesn't, of course, mean that you don't want one (or even better, two!) of your top order to bat pretty much all through the innings; but at the same time you clearly want him/them to cash in towards the end and murder the bowling in the final overs. There's no point in being all out for 116 in 28.2 overs, but equally, a sedate 198 for six is likely to lead to the same outcome.

The Dutch squad undoubtedly contains batsmen, even in the absence of Ten Doeschate and Kervezee, who are capable on their day of making quick runs against decent attacks. But some of the opposition will be a good bit better than decent – Middlesex will have New Zealander Iain O'Brien as their overseas player, for example, and are hoping to add Makhaya Ntini as a Kolpak signing, while O'Brien's fellow Black Cap James Franklin will be back at Gloucestershire – and they will need to be at their best if they are to set, or chase, challenging targets.

We all wish them well, but we must also hope that some Maecenas surfaces in the coming weeks to give the KNCB the wherewithall to make a signing of their own, and ensure that the metaphorical playing field is as level as possible.

Over Christmas I read Franklin Foer's How Soccer Explains the World: An Unlikely Theory of Globalization, a great present from someone who knows me extremely well. It's a fascinating read. Foer is an American journalist, editor of The New Republic, and a self-confessed soccer nut, and his book puts football into a social and economic context in unusual ways.

In turn, he looks at the relationship between Red Star Belgrade's gangs of supporters and Serbian extremism, sectarianism and Glasgow Rangers, the Jewish background (real or assumed) of Hakoah Vienna, Tottenham Hotspur, MTK Budapest and Ajax Amsterdam, hooliganism and Chelsea, gangsterism and Brazilian football, African players in Lviv, the Berlusconi phenomenon, Barcelona and Catalan 'bourgeois nationalism', and the place of football in the Iranian revolution and America's 'culture wars'.

There are, of course, huge differences between the histories and current situations of football and cricket: football has been genuinely global for decades, while the expansion of cricket beyond its traditional heartlands is a recent, and in some respects an artificial, development. The ICC's conversion to a global strategy is still a novelty – and contested by some influential diehards – by comparison with FIFA's long-standing approach.

On the other hand, the forces of globalisation are arguably more important in understanding where cricket now finds itself than in Foer's 'unlikely' thesis – and the converse is perhaps even more true. I'm not sure that Foer is right in claiming that football 'explains the world': it's more that it illustrates larger social and political forces.

In the case of cricket, the relationship is, I believe, a lot more integral. It's not a coincidence that it was Pakistan which first proposed the creation of the category of Associate membership in the midst of the ICC's bitter struggles over South Africa in the 1960s, or that it was India which first sought to harness the Associates and Affiliates in its quest to acquire political dominance thirty years later.

The quantum shift in cricket's power structures which we have seen in recent decades parallels the emergence of the Indian economy as one of the fastest growing and increasingly powerful in the world. And the instruments which have been used to reinforce the position of the ICC power bloc which the BCCI controls – above all, satellite television and the huge income which it generates – is itself a manifestation of globalisation at its most far-reaching.

Without that income, it is safe to say, the Global Development Program itself would not have been possible, and the expansion of ICC membership to more than a hundred countries, bringing with it the prize of IOC recognition, would have been a quixotic dream. Even the inequitable sharing out of the spoils, by which the Asian Cricket Council gets 50% of the development funding, is a reflection of the BCCI's near-absolute power.

If the first seventy years of the ICC's existence were a mirror of colonialism, the last thirty have been a mirror of globalisation. Not the least important aspect of this is the significance of South Asian diasporas in the development of cricket almost everywhere: in the Gulf, but also elsewhere in Asia, across Europe, Africa and the Americas. If it was English expatriates who introduced the game around the world, it is the descendants of their indigenous pupils who are now instrumental in taking it to Oman, Mozambique, Norway and Panama.

In some ways, this process has gone further in cricket than in many other fields. Countries like China, India, South Africa and Brazil are still battling to claim a seat at the tables of real power, but the massive appeal of cricket in the Sub-continent means that in this field, at least, their control is almost unchallengeable. And the emergence of the IPL suggests that, unless India follows Dubai into economic meltdown, this is only likely to become more true.

Whether it is in the long-term interests of the sport remains a matter of conjecture.

It may be a small point in some ways, but the news that Ireland's Intercontinental Cup match against Afghanistan, scheduled to start in Colombo on 23 January, has been brought forward by two days is another reminder of just how marginal the Associates are to the ICC's Full members, and how casually they are often treated.

The reason for the change is the Sri Lankan presidential election, which will take place on 26 January. It's presumably security concerns which lie behind the decision, which in these troubled times is perfectly reasonable.

But what is absolutely unreasonable is the fact that Sri Lanka Cricket apparently got round to informing the participants only a few days ago, necessitating last-minute changes to flights and other arrangements. Even Associate countries now have complex and demanding international programmes, and they can do without being treated in such a cavalier fashion.

The election was called by President Mahinda Rajapaksa on 23 November, and the date was fixed four days later. In other words, the clash between the voting and the Intercontinental Cup match has been known for more than six weeks, and yet the version of the Associates programme published by the ICC at the end of last week still had the original dates.

I suppose we should be grateful that the authorities managed to get their act together a full fortnight before play was set to begin, rather than waiting until the players were on their way to the airport. The ICC officials who have to set up and maintain the Associates schedule deserve our deepest sympathy. And one hopes that they have made their feelings known in no uncertain terms.

Although a report in today's Hindustan Times turns out to be partially incorrect, it nevertheless highlights the fact that the defections of Ugandan and Afghan players after the Under-19 World Cup qualifying tournament in Canada in September have not gone unnoticed.

Some CricketEurope readers have wondered out loud about the stance that would be taken by the New Zealand immigration authorities when it came to the competition proper, and it transpires that they did indeed make their anxieties known to the organisers. They were understandably keen to ensure that there was no repetition of what happened in Canada.

According to an ICC spokesman, responding to the newspaper report, New Zealand Immigration asked Cricket New Zealand to retain the passports of the players 'from certain countries'. The tournament authorities considered that it would be invidious to single out particular squads in this way, and Cricket New Zealand is therefore holding the passports of all the teams. All team managements have apparently accepted this as a necessary and equitable measure.

The problem is clearly not confined to cricket: athletes from other sports have also gone missing after international competitions, and it is something which is not likely to go away any time soon. As a Hindustan Times reader put it in an online comment: 'This will continue till the fruits of growth, development and income are evenly distributed over the globe.It is because of wide disparity in life which forces people to go for greener pasture.'

Whether the infant who today takes hold of a miniature cricket bat for the first time will live to see a world in which 'the fruits of growth, development and income are evenly distributed over the globe' is a matter for earnest debate, and it takes us back to those large questions about globalisation and sport which I started to consider the other day.

In the meantime, the governing bodies of sport have to deal with the world as it is. And – it's a genuine pleasure to say this – this time the tournament organisers seem to have got it absolutely right.

The current unholy furore over the ICC review system for umpires' decisions, arising from Daryl Harper's confirmation of a not-out decision in favour of Graeme Smith yesterday – and no doubt further stoked by match referee Roshan Mahanama's official statement and another tight call against AB de Villiers this morning – highlights the pitfalls of the whole enterprise.

Although the ever-increasing use of technology is intended to eliminate obvious umpiring errors, what it is doing in practice is shifting the occasion for animosity and resentment from the real howlers to calls which are much more marginal. I'm not primarily concerned about the rights and wrongs of these specific decisions: it's what the new system is doing to the culture of the game that I find worrying.

It's been a long and steady downhill progress. It began with the scoreboard-as-big-screen, which immediately led to dismissed batsmen publicly reviewing the umpire's decision as they walked off the field, and pioneering technologies like Hawkeye. Umpires have become more and more subject to a very, very exacting level of scrutiny, every important call picked over and analysed by pundits, players, managements and the general public.

Bowlers overpitch, bowl long hops and deliver filthy legside wides. Batsmen play daft strokes in moments of temporary insanity. Fielders drop catches, or give away overthrows with wild pings at the stumps. And umpires sometimes get it wrong. These are consequences of the human condition. We're imperfect, dammit. We make mistakes. Blame it on Adam and Eve if you wish. But above all, get over it!

It's often argued in response to this that an umpire's mistake can turn a game. That's being said of Harper's rulings in Johannesburg, although it seems more likely that it will be the weather that has the last laugh in this match, and this series. But batsmen's mistakes cost matches as well, and nobody will need to remind Stuart Broad of the possible consequences of an overthrow.

In our world, of course, it's only the players, those often over-hyped divas, who matter. The umpires are the extras, necessary for the whole opera to be performed, but essentially and preferably invisible until they drop a spear or knock over a piece of scenery. Cut off a soprano's aria or cough during a poignant death scene, and your gaffe will be front-page news for days.

As Scyld Berry said in last year's Wisden, the ICC is to be congratulated for its efforts to improve the standard of umpiring, and that applies from the highest levels of the international game to club cricket in the smallest Affiliate nations. Nothing, however, will ever prevent umpires from sometimes getting it wrong.

And what the development of more and more technological knick knacks and their incorporation into a referral system is doing is helping to undermine the authority of officials whose position both ICC policy and the Laws of Cricket seek to uphold. Scenes like yesterday's, or reports that the England management are pursuing the Smith decision, do real damage to the game.

Law 3.13 states that 'All disputes shall be determined by the umpires'. Law 27.9 adds '… the umpires' decision, once made, is final'. The Preamble to the Laws which defines the Spirit of Cricket proclaims that 'It is against the Spirit of the Game … to dispute an umpire's decision by word, action or gesture'. The ICC Code of Conduct rightly seeks to enforce these rules.

But the trouble is that the ever-increasing array of technological gadgetry, itself subject to human imperfection (note the current hoo-ha over whether or no the sound levels for the replays that Harper may or may not have seen were in some way less than optimal), and even more the uses to which it is being put, serves to undermine all of that in ways which have the potential to destroy a man's reputation.

I'm not really a Luddite. I love to know how fast a delivery was, and at a Test or Full member ODI my eyes will flick to the big screen as quickly as anybody's. I'll even second-guess a tight leg-before or bat-pad decision with the best of them. But I have deep, deep doubts about the consequences of the referral system, and I'm profoundly happy that the sheer cost of all the kit – which could, incidentally, be much better spent on other things – is likely to keep Associate and Affiliate cricket a technology-free zone for as far into the future as I probably need to see.

Whichever way you look at it, it's been a disappointing Under-19 World Cup for the Associate and Affiliate sides. My colleague Ben Stinga rightly points out that the batting has been better, with both individual and team scores higher overall than in 2008, but that has actually produced less in terms of results.

It all began promisingly with Canada's opening-day victory over Zimbabwe, but everything that has followed has served merely to reinforce the size of the gap which still remains between the Full members (Zimbabwe always excepted) and the rest. Of the eleven matches between the qualifiers and the other senior sides, none was closer than a margin of five wickets or 100 runs.

Even the batting failed to live up to the promise of the first couple of days: the USA managed to pass 150 twice, against both Australia and South Africa, a not inconsiderable achievement in itself, and Papua New Guinea did it against Bangladesh and the West Indies, but other than that the sides struggled to get much past the hundred, with Ireland's all-out-for-65 humiliation by Australia the unquestioned nadir. There may have been seven half-centuries against Full member opposition on the first two days, but there were only two more thereafter.

If the batsmen have found the going tough, the bowlers have suffered even more. Against the nine Full members other than Zimbabwe, Associate and Affiliate attacks managed a total of just 48 wickets in those eleven matches, an average of under 4.4 per innings. Collectively, these bowlers had an economy rate of 5.08 an over, but a strike rate of 60.97 – against batsmen from the Test countries, they just couldn't take wickets.

Again, there were one or two exceptions: Papua New Guinea had the knack of getting amongst opposing top orders, but for the rest the more experienced teams seem to have been in little serious trouble.

For the knockers of the ICC Global Development Program, this will no doubt demonstrate that the smaller and newer cricketing countries are doomed to perpetual second-class citizenship. The gap between the Full members and even the best of the rest is, they will say, so great that it simply cannot be bridged.

But that's a cop-out. It's not that too much money is being spent on player development outside the charmed circle of Full membership, but too little. And not necessarily on the right things. The academies and camps which the ICC runs, whether at global or regional level, no doubt make a difference, but the problem of relative inexperience can't be solved in the nets, not even in a one-to-one session with the greatest specialist coaches in the world.

The lads who represent Australia, India or South Africa in these tournaments have not only had more and better coaching; they have learned their sport in the most testing of match conditions for their age-group, playing against peers who are every bit as hungry and as steeped in the game as they are. Under-age competitions, or even the senior leagues, in the Associate countries are no substitute for that.

Being one of the most gifted players of your age-group in even the top Associates can easily give you a false idea of how good you are. The Under-19 World Cup every two years is a reality check, but it's not enough, and neither are the mostly-annual regional youth tournaments. Somehow or other, the Associates have to give their best players more opportunities to take on Full member opposition as part of their overall development. Getting thumped by a top state, county or provincial side may not be an enjoyable experience, but it tells you what you need to do to cope in such conditions, and with more experience and a lot of hard work you might just start to win.

Meanwhile, the Under-19 World Cup is entering its second phase. For the six qualifiers, the Plate competition still represents a challenge, not least because Bangladesh and Zimbabwe are there as well. Enthusiasts for Associate and Affiliate cricket will be wishing all six well as they attempt to prove that they are still capable of pulling off the odd surprise.

My analysis the other day of the Associates' and Affiliate's performances at the Under-19 World Cup led one reader to conclude (or imply) that I think the gap between the Full members and the rest to be unbridgeable.

Nothing could be further from the truth: my central point was that only by gaining experience against Full member opposition outside the context of the World Cup itself could young players from Associate and Affiliate countries build up the experience they so visibly lack at present. What applies to their elders and (at the moment) betters applies equally – or even more – to the rising generation.

But there is another matter, which I kept referring to but didn't really discuss: the fact that Zimbabwe has managed to bridge the gap – but unfortunately heading in the opposite direction.

Two World Cups ago, the Zimbabweans won all their group matches, bowling Ireland out for 97 and beating Nepal and England before going out in the quarter-finals. Last time, they won just one match out of five, losing to New Zealand, hosts Malaysia and Pakistan in the pool matches and Nepal in the plate quarter-finals before gaining their revenge over Malaysia and then going down to Ireland to finish fourteenth.

And it wasn't simply that they lost; they lost heavily, again and again. And their performances this time have been equally discouraging: after losing a fairly tight game against Canada, they managed 121 against Sri Lanka and 135 against New Zealand to lose by eight and seven wickets respectively, and on Saturday they collapsed to 49 for six against the Ireland new-ball attack and eventually suffered another thumping defeat. They are, as a team, somewhere below the level of the leading qualifiers.

The slow-motion train wreck that is Zimbabwean cricket has been one of the greatest scandals in the world game throughout this period. Protected by its friends on the ICC Board, Zimbabwe Cricket has continued to receive funding from the ICC which at an estimated $10 million is many times as much as that which goes to the High Performance countries even under the new phase of the latter programme, and has been astronomically more than they received up to 2009.

The dreadful performances of the senior side, the utter shambles of the Zimbabwean domestic competition, the evidence of financial irregularities, the links between the sport's governing body and the manifestly appalling ZANU-PF regime – none of it has prevented the continued flow of ICC resources into the sump which the coffers of Zimbabwe Cricket evidently constitute.

Nothing more cogently illustrates the futility of this policy than the decline and fall of the Zimbabwean Under-19 squad. Just think what Ireland, Canada or Afghanistan could have achieved with a tenth of the money, over and above what they have been getting so far, which has been squandered on Zimbabwe in the past four years.

This is, of course, relevant to Ireland's current application for Full member status, and the discussions which are apparently going on concerning a formalisation of what has until now been an ad hoc compromise intended to keep Zimbabwe within the magic circle: Full membership without Test status. One of the most significant consequences of such a development would be a levelling of the financial playing-field, for Ireland and perhaps in due course for other current Associates as well. The rewards for raising their game as Ireland have unquestionably done should include a larger slice of the ICC's cake, while perhaps Zimbabwe's should be reduced until they begin to demonstrate that it's money well spent.

The present squad now have one more match, against the USA on Monday, to regain some degree of credibility. But even a win there will not hide the fundamental problem, and the need for radical action to address it.

The new ICC Under-19 rankings, following last month's World Cup tournament, make for interesting reading, more particularly because Zimbabwe are 13th, behind not only the other Full members, but also Ireland, Canada and Papua New Guinea.

In the rankings used to establish the groups for that tournament, they were listed as tenth, despite having finished 14th in the 2008 World Cup, so the latest version is a more realistic representation of where they actually are. But the question is, what impact will this have on the 2012 tournament?

For the top nine countries, the effect of the new rankings is pretty straightforward: if the same system is used in 2012 as was employed this time, it is already possible to predict that Group A will include Australia and South Africa (matched against each other once more), Group B Pakistan and India, Group C the West Indies and New Zealand, and Group D Sri Lanka, England and Bangladesh.

The privileging of the weakest Full member was arguably unfair, although it is admittedly difficult to produce an entirely consistent seeding system when some participants took part in the previous tournament and others didn't. For the New Zealand competition, the qualifiers were ranked on the basis of the qualifying tournament, and it would have been difficult to slot Zimbabwe into that. The effect was, moreover, marginal; had Zimbabwe been seeded fourteenth instead of tenth, they would have been placed in the same group.

But maybe we should go one step further, and ask whether there is any longer any reason why Zimbabwe should continue to get an automatic place in the Under-19 World Cup at all. Their performances in the past two events have been dire, and the equitable outcome would be that they take their place in the global qualifying tournament along with the leading Associates and Affiliates.

It would probably be going too far to make them earn their place in the global qualifying tournament by playing in the African pre-qualifier, as Uganda, Kenya, Namibia, Sierra Leone and so on will have to do, though a case could even be made for that. But that they should be given automatic qualification for the 2012 World Cup would be simply outrageous.

Only time will tell whether or not the news that four leading players of VVV Amsterdam are moving to other clubs is the first sign of a wider concentration of talent as a result of the reduction of the number of teams in the top flight of Dutch domestic cricket from ten to eight.

Such a process, if it happens, is not likely to take place immediately: players' loyalty to their existing clubs will probably lead them in many cases to stay and do their damnedest to win promotion to the Topklasse, but the narrowing of the highest level will have little benefit to Dutch cricket in the longer term if the better players continue to be scattered through the first two or three divisions. The justification of an eight-team Topklasse is that it will raise the standard, not dissipate it.

There are, certainly, already people who regard the whole restructuring as a mistake and would like to see it reversed at the first opportunity. I understand their arguments, but I believe they are mistaken. There are, as I have repeatedly argued, simply not enough good players around to maintain ten strong teams in the top division, and a degree of concentration is therefore essential if talented players are to continue to develop.

Let's look once again at the facts. In last season's Hoofdklasse, only 29 batsmen managed an average of 25 or better, and that included nine coaches and exchange players. In other words, out of the ten top sixes, only half were able to achieve what might be regarded as a decent level over the season. The situation with the bowling was somewhat better – 49 bowlers averaged better than 30, only six of them from overseas – but even so, that indicates that most attacks are spread pretty thin.

Nor was there a massive pool of talent waiting in the Eerste Klasse. There a mere 26 batsmen were able to average 25 or better, of whom 14 were coaches or exchange players! Again the bowling was more effective, with 43 bowlers achieving averages below 30.

There are many factors involved in the failure of the system to produce a steady stream of high-quality Dutch-trained young players into the national set-up, and the fact that the pool of talent has been spread too wide is only one of them. But it is one of them, and the advocates of change made no secret of their belief that a narrower, tighter structure at the top was part of the answer.

Ambitious, talented young players will face difficult choices over the next year or two, but if they are serious about playing cricket at the highest level, some of them will need to migrate to the more successful clubs, especially if those clubs are also able to offer them better playing conditions, more effective coaching, and the chance to develop further and more quickly.

It is to be hoped that the existence of an eight-team Hoofdklasse will play its own part in this concentration of strength: with the weaker Eerste Klasse sides effectively moving down a division, it should also provide a leaner, tougher competition for clubs just outside the top flight.

It is an approach which will need time to work, and to abandon the initiative after one season would not only be a retrograde step; it would make Dutch cricket look ridiculous. But the KNCB, too, has a responsibility in all this: to continue to set out in plain terms its vision of the domestic scene, and to explain how it sees this within the broader enterprise of making the game stronger, tougher and more popular.

Life is certainly never dull in the world of Associates cricket. Yesterday began with the Scots, who should have left the hotel at 6:30 for the 75-minute journey to Abu Dhabi for their warm-up match still sitting around at 8:00 waiting for the wretched vehicle to appear. The Kenyans, they were eventually told, had now arrived safely at the Sheikh Zayed Stadium, and the bus was on its back to them up.

So I set out in my taxi, waving cheerfully and offering to send it back for them as an insurance policy. It seemed a reasonable bet that I would arrive at the stadium before they did. I had, however, reckoned without the subtleties of the taxi service in the UAE. Warned by my colleague Barry Chambers, who has been here before, my opening gambit was to make sure the driver knew where he was going.

'Oh yes,' he assured me, 'the cricket stadium is very famous. Last time I was in Abu Dhabi, I saw the signs.'

140 km. and an hour and a quarter later, things seemed a lot less certain. After driving around for a while, and clearly taking at least one wrong turning, the driver resorted to the tactic of flagging down local Abu Dhabi taxis and asking them if they knew the way. But there was a fundamental problem: he was looking for Zayed Sports City, while the Sheikh Zayed Cricket Stadium is somewhere else entirely.

I would be there yet, endlessly circling Abu Dhabi like the man in the Kingston Trio's 1960s song who 'rides forever 'neath the streets of Boston', had he not eventually decided to hand me over to one of his Abu Dhabi colleagues. A quarter of an hour later we arrived at the impressively futuristic stadium, to find that the Scots were, of course, out in the middle warming up. He who laughs last etc.

I subsequently learned that two other media journalists had had exactly the same experience, touring downtown Abu Dhabi in search of Zayed Sports City before being handed over to a local driver. It must be a staple source of income for Dubai taxi drivers, who may be among the ICC's greatest fans.

It was a suitable start to a day which had more than a little of the peculiar to it – not least the weather. We have, I am sorry to report, barely seen the sun since we arrived, and Sunday felt more like a grey European summer than a day in the Arabian Desert. The westerly breeze which built up steadily during the afternoon had a definite chill to it, and the cloud cover meant that the floodlights came on a good deal earlier than they might normally do. The UAE players were evidently feeling the cold, several of them playing in sweaters.

But one local resident kept reminding me that this was a foreign experience: the ruddy-brown kestrel which took up a vantage point perched on the electronic scoreboard, swooping down from time to time to pounce on something in the grass and return to its look-out. It made a change from the herons of Amstelveen.

The last time I ventured to comment on the ICC's decision-making about the status of Associates matches, the full might of the Media Department descended upon my head like a ton of bricks. So I hesitate to venture into this territory once more, but in all honesty it is impossible not to be flabbergasted by the way in which the games involving the UAE and the USA have been treated in the World Twenty20 qualifier.

It might seem a safe assumption that since these two sides were deemed good enough to take part in the tournament – a much-criticised decision which was actually vindicated by the Americans' opening-day defeat of Scotland, and even more by the Emiratis' unbeaten march into the Super Four – their games would be given the same status as those between the other six teams.

Not so. The ICC has ruled that matches involving the UAE and USA are not Twenty20 internationals, on the grounds that these two countries do not have full ODI status. The UAE are taking part as the hosts, this argument runs, and the USA were given a wild card for reasons which had little or nothing to do with their current standing in international cricket.

I know that one of the objections raised to the Americans being invited was their present lowly ranking in ODIs – they will be taking part in the World Cricket League Division 5 later this month – but it does not seem logical that, once they were here, they were not treated on the same basis as everyone else.

In a couple of hours from now, as I write this on Saturday morning, the UAE will take on Afghanistan for a place in the World Twenty20 championship in the West Indies. Yet this match, too, will not be a full international. Should the UAE win, thus qualifying for the main event, we may perhaps assume that their status will change, since the expectation is that any matches they played in the Caribbean would be full Twenty20 internationals, and the final will then count.

I have to say that I find this just plain daft. All the matches in this tournament should have been given the same status, without reference to the teams' standing in any other form of cricket.

Cricket is, I think, most unusual in its obsession with status. A football match between England or Germany and the Faroe Islands or Liechtenstein is a full international, whether it's a World Cup qualifier or a friendly. I'm all in favour of keeping Test cricket as a Gold Standard – though even here I'd like to see the possibility of well-qualified Associates moving up – but to ring-fence Twenty20 internationals to this degree makes no sense at all.

Thursday's ODI at the Sharjah CA Stadium made it, as we have already reported, the first venue to host 200 ODIs. It had been stuck for seven years on 198, 73 of them in a hectic five-year period between 1998 and 2003, and the last the final of the Cherry Blossom Sharjah Cup on 10 April 2003.

The ground's popularity as a venue during that period was not wholly unrelated to the unsavoury business of match-fixing which culminated in Sir Paul Condon's report in 2001, and did not long survive the clean-up of the sport which followed. Since that last match in 2003 the stadium has been used only for domestic games, and the signs of neglect are everywhere one looks.

Even so, it came as a bit of a shock when I arrived there an hour and a half before the scheduled start of Tuesday's ODI between Afghanistan and Canada to find that, although there were clear signs of a strip in preparation, the place was virtually deserted. The sole occupant was a local man walking leisurely laps of the outfield, who told me that the ground was no longer used for international cricket, so I must be at the wrong place.

I knew, of course, that warm-up Twenty20 matches had been played there the week before. But I wondered whether I had made a mistake, and should have been in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, respectively three-quarters of an hour and more than two hours away. Not in the greatest of humours (to put it mildly), I was getting ready to leave when another chap appeared, who turned out to be the fourth umpire.

A couple of phone calls, and he had established that the starting time had been switched at the last minute from 9:30 to 14:00. I wasn't surprised that nobody had told me, but it seemed a bit much that nobody had got round to telling him. But it meant that we spent a pleasantly sociable morning, and we were rewarded with as thrilling a match as it would be possible to ask for.

But back to the Stadium. Waiting for my flight on Wednesday morning, I read in the Khaleej Times, a local English-language newspaper, that the Stadium's owner, Abdul Rahman Bukhatir, has big ambitions for the future. He is also a partner in the brand-new Dubai Stadium, a magnificent venue which has, like the Sheikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi, been constructed during Sharjah's period in purdah.

'With Dubai and Abu Dhabi in the trinity,' he told the Khaleej Times, 'I foresee the UAE hosting a major tournament in the near future. With the ICC headquartered here it is just a question of time. And we are ready for it.

'Three world class venues can provide the logistics needed to stage such a tournament. We intend to get every cricket playing nation to enjoy this incredible experience of playing under the ìmagic ringî of lights, something you cannot appreciate until you see it.'

He even holds out the prospect of 'the ultimate dream of a World Cup one day' – 'nothing is impossible,' he adds.

Bukhatir doesn't include in his plans the three-ground complex currently under construction by the ICC at its Academy near the main Dubai Stadium, which will presumably be completed some time this century – it was to have been used for the 2009 World Cup qualifier, but it still isn't finished. Once it is, the Emirates' total resources will be even more impressive.

But it has to be said that Sharjah is no longer a 'world class venue', and it needs a lot of money spent on it if it is to return to that category. Only about 60% of the floodlights in that 'magic ring' are currently working – I know, because I was trying to take photographs, and the light was a nightmare. It was just about good enough to play in, but one can imagine Full member sides raising their eyebrows.

A thorough facelift would no doubt bring it back on terms with its newer and smarter rivals down the road in Dubai and Abu Dhabi, but there is no alternative to spending that money if Bukhatir is to be able to talk persuasively about his trinity.

Any captain who declares and then sees his side lose is bound to do a certain amount of soul-searching, and perhaps be asked some searching questions by those around him. Spare a thought, then, for Canada's Ash Bagai and the Netherlands' Peter Borren, both of whom set their Intercontinental Cup opponents last-day targets this week and had to watch as they duly reached them.

In some ways, the two men's circumstances were diametrically opposed: Canada had dominated their match against Afghanistan in Sharjah for the best part of three days, running up a massive 566 and then bowling the Afghans out for 264. The Dutch, on the other hand, were playing catch-up against Kenya, having managed to get to 385 only thanks to a fine double-hundred from Ryan ten Doeschate, and then conceding a first-innings lead of 48. Bagai, therefore, arguably had a lot more to lose than his Dutch counterpart.

In truth, the remarkable part of Bagai's decision-making was not the declaration, but the earlier decision not to enforce the follow-on with Afghanistan 302 behind. Not having been there, I can only guess at the reasons for this call, which struck me as very peculiar at the time and which backfired so dramatically.

The injury to seamer Umar Bhatti, Canada's leading first-class wicket-taker, may have had something to do with it, as may Afghanistan's increasingly fearsome reputation for pulling chestnuts out of fires. But the Canadian attack had only bowled 79 overs in dismissing the Afghans the first time, and I would have thought that putting them straight back in was Bagai's best chance of driving home the psychological advantage he had gained by establishing such a huge lead. Maybe I'm missing something, but that would surely have been the conventional way of thinking?

Bagai's decision to bat again gave him another problem, the timing of his declaration. With 55 overs left in the day and a natural desire to give his bowlers a quick blast at the Afghan top order before the close, he only had 40 or so overs to extend his side's lead. In fact, when the declaration came, Afghanistan were set 494 to win in a minimum of 109 overs, a required rate of around 4.5. As we now know, they approached that task in exemplary fashion, and Canada were unable to claim the early wickets they needed to force outright victory.

We will, of course, never know that would have happened had Bagai put Afghanistan back in. It would surely have taken them the rest of the third day and part of the fourth to wipe off the deficit, so even if they had batted much better than they did in their first innings, it would have been well into the afternoon session before Nowrooz Mangal could have been in a position to declare and set Canada a target. Without Afghanistan's main strike bowker, Hamid Hassan, and on a docile pitch which reduced even Mohammad Nabi to relative ineffectiveness, it seems unlikely that the Canadians would have collapsed in a session and a bit. The match might have ended in a draw, but I can't for the life of me see how even this Afghan side could have won it.

Borren's decision in Nairobi was a lot more straightforward. Thanks to a fine opening stand between Alexei Kervezee and Eric Szwarczynski, and an invaluable knock from Nick Statham, his side had recovered from that 48-run deficit and put him in a position to set Kenya a target.

Behind on the first innings, the Netherlands' only hope of taking anything from the game was to bowl the Kenyans out on the final afternoon, and to have a chance of doing that the Dutch had to give them a chance of winning: too cautious a declaration, and the batsmen might have shut up shop and settled for some practice in the middle.

Borren opted to ask them to make five an over for 64 overs to win, presumably calculating that even if his bowlers could not bowl them out, they should at least be able to defend that sort of lead. It's a matter of history now that they couldn't.

Again, not having been there, I don't know whether they bowled poorly, or whether Kenya's victory was primarily due to some magnificent batting from David and Collins Obuya (who had also made the Dutch suffer in the first innings) and Rakep Patel, or whether the pitch lasted better than Borren expected. They must certainly have batted pretty well and, like Afghanistan, they clearly timed their run to perfection.

Perhaps Borren will be thinking that if only he'd batted on for a few more overs the equation would have been different, and perhaps the Kenyans would have taken more risks and given more chances. But equally, doing that might have killed the game stone dead.

In the end, who'd be a captain?

On the face of it, the ICC's announcement of an 'internal investigation into the events surrounding' the match between Nepal and the USA in Kathmandu last Friday is good news for those of us who believe that it would be scandalous should Nepal gain the Division 5 title and promotion to Division 4 as a consequence of the misconduct of a portion of the crowd, and for Singapore, who were the entirely innocent – though absent – victims of the riot which took place, being denied promotion purely as a result of it.

But a moment's examination of the ICC statement announcing the inquiry raises fears that a whitewash is being prepared. 'The ICC will investigate,' the statement says, 'firstly whether the event technical committee correctly applied and interpreted the tournament regulations and, secondly, the nature of the security breach at the ground.'

There is, I think, no doubt that the management of the match itself, with the calculation of the remaining time available and the consequent application of the Duckworth/Lewis system, was technically correct. When the Event Technical Committee met that evening, however, it was confronted with a tricky problem: the effect of that process was to put Nepal into second place on net run rate, when had the match taken its normal course they would certainly have been third. The Committee evidently decided, for whatever reason, not to change that result, despite the fact that it meant Nepal would benefit quite directly from their supporters' lamentable actions and Singapore lose out as a result.

Ground invasions and spectator misconduct are, of course, nowhere mentioned in the tournament playing conditions, although regulation 21.9.5 does appear to give the ETC quite strong powers in cases of dispute over the final standings. Both its decision and the way in which ICC media releases went out of their way to play down what had happened suggest that it was decided not to apply those powers, and to try to smooth the whole affair over.

This is a case in which the consequences of the home crowd's behaviour appear to have included a quite blatant breach of natural justice at the expense of their side's main rivals, Singapore. It is that injustice which must now be rectified, but there is little sign that that is what the ICC wishes to do. By setting the terms of its 'investigation' so narrowly, it seems determined to conclude that procedures were followed and all's well in the world.

But let's come back to the Friday evening. Even if the Event Technical Committee believed that it had no power to intervene other than by making a report, or was so intimidated by the possibility of further public disorder that it was determined to avoid confrontation at all costs, it is a mystery why no statement was made that evening expressing the ICC's outright condemnation of what had taken place and promising that the matter would not be allowed to rest.

Had something along these lines:

The Event Technical Committee and the Cricket Association of Nepal deplore in the strongest terms the completely unacceptable misconduct of the portion of the crowd during the latter stages of the match between Nepal and the USA at Tribhuvan University on Friday, 26 February.

The Cricket Association of Nepal sincerely apologises to the players and officials for the crowd's behaviour. For its part, the Event Technical Committee confirms that a full report of the events and their consequences has been made to the appropriate authorities, and anticipates that appropriate action will be taken in due course.

been issued, we would all be more confident that the scandal was not going to be brushed under the ICC's carpet. The involvement of the CAN in the statement would have been evidence that they, too, recognised the impropriety of what had occurred. Had they refused to act in this way, that would have spoken volumes about their de facto complicity in the misconduct of some of their fans.

It's not to late for this travesty to be put right. Let's hope that my pessimistic assessment of what the ICC investigation will achieve turns out to be wrong, and that the Executive Board will do what the Event Technical Committee didn't. I say it again: if a bunch of Nepalese hooligans are allowed to get away with this, it will be a licence for rioting crowds everywhere.

It may not amount to very much, but there are a few indications in the ICC's second media release in as many days on the subject of the Kathmandu riot that cricket's world body is beginning to understand just how threatening those events were for the credibility of its World Cricket League and its own authority as the regulator of the game.

In the first place, a statement by ICC Chief Executive Haroon Lorgat describes the events in Kathmandu as 'unacceptable', the first overt condemnation of the crowd's behaviour by any ICC official. Although it still seems to prefer the euphemism 'unruly crowd behaviour', and although we may wonder why it took five days for the ICC to make such a statement, Lorgat's words go some way towards reassuring those of us who have been alarmed by the lack of candour in previous media releases.

Secondly, the ICC investigation's terms of reference are described with a somewhat broader brush in this new release than in its predecessor on Tuesday. Whereas its remit was then limited to 'whether the event technical committee correctly applied and interpreted the tournament regulations and, secondly, the nature of the security breach at the ground', now we are told that 'the investigation will cover all aspects of the match including the calculations of net run-rate, how the match officials reacted and the nature of the security-related issues which arose during the match.'

Interpreting ICC statements on such issues can be a bit like going over Soviet-era emanations from the Politburo, but there is no question that this new formulation gives the appearance of a wider and more thorough-going inquiry. Still, there is no guarantee that this will take on board the manifest injustice that has been done to Singapore, which remains for many the absolutely crucial issue in this unhappy affair.

Then there's the composition of the inquiry team. Comprising three top ICC officials – David Becker of the Legal department, General Manager-Cricket David Richardson, and Anti-Corruption and Security Unit boss Ravi Sawani – it is unquestionably replete with expertise and experience. But it is also made up of ICC insiders, and it does not meet the demand which Singapore CA President Imran Hamid reported to the Straits Times on Wednesday: 'we want it to be independent because it is the decisions of the ICC match officials that we are questioning.'

Even the presence of 'independent commissioner' Ajmalul Hossain QC is only partly reassuring, not only because this extremely distinguished London-based barrister is Bangladesh's nominee on the ICC's own Code of Conduct Commission, but more importantly, because his role appears to be confined to 'any alleged breaches of security protocols on the part of the tournament host'. In other words, his remit does not extend to the core of the problem, the way in which the crowd's misbehaviour benefited Nepal at the expense of Singapore.

We shall see in due course. This is a situation which can be summed up with the biblical axiom: 'By their deeds shall ye know them'. Any investigation which fails to engage with that central issue will be profoundly flawed, and will do nothing to further the credibility of the ICC. Not only the Singapore CA, but cricket-lovers everywhere will be looking to those three wise men and their independent commissioner to prove that the ICC is capable of dealing effectively with cricket hooliganism and its consequences.

In order to solve a problem, you have first to recognise and acknowledge it. One key aspect of the debate about the recruitment of foreign-produced Dutch passport holders has been the argument by some observers that it undermines, or completely negates, the KNCB's youth development programme, and that it would be better to play young Dutch-produced players regardless of its effect on the team's performance.

So let's look at the reality, bearing in mind that we're talking about top order batsmen who might well, in the Clydesdale Bank 40 competition, be facing challenges like Middlesex's all-international opening attack of Kiwi Iain O'Brien and England's newest fast man Steven Finn, Yorkshire's England leg-spinner Adil Rashid, and Danish Kaneria of Pakistan and Essex.

And let's start with the leading batsmen in what passes for the premier Dutch domestic youth competition, the Under-18 A league, over recent years. Leaving out Alexei Kervezee and Stijn Allema, these are the batsmen who actually had the best records:

                                    M   I NO  Runs    HS      Ave.
Daan van Everdingen          2004   8   7  1  468    117     66.86
Suleman Ghaznavi          2004-05  17  16  3  532    104*    40.92
Arno Krulder                 2005   7   7  1  276     88     46.00
Steven de Bruin           2005-06  12  12  3  481    151*    53.44
Thijs Fischer             2005-07  22  22  5  975    250     57.35
Floris Kingma             2007-09  16  15  4  527     92*    58.56
Philip van den Brandeler  2008-09  12  11  4  289     60     41.29
Bavvik Nana               2008-09  13  12  2  450    162*    45.00
Vinoo Tewarie             2008-09  10  10  3  355    120*    39.44

If we compare these records with the same players' performances in European Under-19 tournaments and the 2009 global qualifier, the size of the gap between junior club cricket and international youth standard is immediately and painfully obvious:

                                    M   I NO  Runs    HS      Ave.
Van Everdingen            2004-05   6   6  1  171     67*    34.20
Ghaznavi                     2005   3   3  -   66     34     22.00
De Bruin                  2006-08   7   8  -   94     39     11.75
Fischer                   2006-07   5   6  -  117     65     19.50
Kingma                       2009   9   8  1   97     31*    13.00
Van den Brandeler            2009  12   9  -  162     85     18.00
Tewarie                      2009  12  10  -  171     52     17.00

There's enough there, in the form of one decent innings, to confirm that some of these batsmen at least have the ability to succeed, but there is no real evidence of consistency or, to be frank, of the quality required to do well at the highest level. So let's look at how the same group have made, or are making, the transition to senior domestic cricket:

                                    M   I NO  Runs    HS      Ave.
Van Everdingen            VOC HK   76  59  8  958     85     18.75
Ghaznavi                  ACC HK   22  22  1  172     28      8.19
Krulder               Quick H HK   18  14  2   97     23*     8.08
De Bruin                  ACC HK   28  27  -  343     51     12.70
Fischer                QH/HCC HK   23  23  -  327     74     14.22
Kingma                    VCC HK   32  26  9  267     34     15.71
Van den Brandeler         HCC HK   13  12  4  199     53*    24.88
Nana                  Kampong EK   23  20  2  168     27      9.33
Tewarie                  VRA  HK   26  18  1  177     45*    10.41

To these names we might add one or two other recent products of the Dutch youth system: Lesley Stokkers (Quick), with 1153 Hoofdklasse runs at 22.17, or Bob Entrop (HCC), 825 at 16.50.

These are, it has to be emphasised, the best of the crop. Is any one of them remotely ready to take on an English county attack, or even one of the other leading Associates? The figures surely speak for themselves. The notion that there are batsmen of quality whose development would be impeded by the inclusion of Cooper and De Boorder in the Dutch side is simply an absurd fantasy.

The purpose of this exercise, I want to emphasise, is not to put anyone down. But if we are going to have a serious, grown-up discussion, we need to recognise that there's a problem. The next step is to analyse it. I'll come back to this tomorrow, and attempt to sort out some of the reasons that things are as they currently are.

In yesterday's post I produced some statistics suggesting that the graduation of the most talented young Dutch batsmen to senior club cricket and beyond left, to put it as kindly as possible, something to be desired. Apart from the exceptional Alexei Kervezee and the unfortunately unavailable Stijn Allema, not one player has successfully made the transition over the past five or six years.

Today I want to examine the possible causes of this situation, and I'm going to suggest that none of the elements of a complex picture can be regarded with anything remotely approaching approval. I think we can distinguish six such elements:

The national coaching system
It's not news that the Dutch Lions programme has been less effective than anyone would like, and that tournament results have often been disappointing. It is, in part, a question of money: KNCB director of cricket Roland Lefebvre has too much on his plate, and there is nothing to compare, for example, with Scotland's system of partly-government-funded regional coaches. There's a great element of ad hoccery about the organisation of age-group coaching, and not enough has been done to spot the real talents and invest time and effort in their development. There are signs that all this is changing, but it will take time. And in any case, the weaknesses here are merely the tip of an iceberg.

The competition structure
Here the problem is to a considerable degree to do with numbers: with, typically, no more than 200 kids in an age-group, and fewer than that by the time we get to the under-18s, the range of ability is tremendous. The most gifted players achieve success too easily in youth cricket, and don't get enough real competition. There's nothing between that and the national youth squads, and nothing after it except club cricket, where many of them will be bit-part players with few opportunities to concentrate on their development. So they are actually encouraged to drift. With the advent of CDO Marike Dickmann there are, again, signs that the youth competitions themselves are being radically rethought, but that will only bear real fruit if it's part of an overall strategic plan. Part of that, I am convinced, involves the introduction of an element of regional competition, but that's something we'll be coming back to in the very near future.

The administrators
It's not unfair to say that the KNCB has been extremely slow to deal with these issues, and it hasn't been helped by the recent history of conflict between the Youth Committee and the Board. But the former Youth Committee seemed at times to be more concerned with advantaging its own position than with really getting to grips with the problems, and the arrival of two of its members on the Board did very little to improve the situation. It's also not unreasonable to ask whether it's always helpful – though perhaps it's natural enough – when key volunteers in the national structure are the parents of kids who are themselves coming through the youth system. With a newly-reconstituted Youth Committee starting work, perhaps this really is the moment at which things will change for the better.

The club coaches
How many of the player-coaches who have worked in Dutch cricket over the past ten, or fifteen, or thirty years can honestly be said to have made a genuine contribution to youth development? I've been an observer of the scene for half that time, and I would have to say that those who have made a significant difference constitute a small minority. For many overseas players, a summer in The Netherlands has been as much a paid holiday as a period of sustained hard work. They may complain about the attitudes of the kids, or their level of ability, but they are often just looking for an excuse not to put in the hours. There have been honourable exceptions, but not nearly enough of them.

The clubs
That is, of course, the fault of the clubs, who are too often more interested in ensuring short-term success on the field than they are in building up their own playing resources. As long as the 'coach' is making runs and taking wickets, they're not too bothered about whether he devotes his Saturdays to mentoring the youth teams, or throws himself into working hard with the under-15s on a Thursday afternoon. Too many clubs, as I have often remarked, don't put any effort into youth development at all. Here, too, there is evidence of change: gradually, the leading clubs are beginning to spend money on proper coaching, and the work of men like Garry MacDonald at Rood en Wit and Ben Williams at VOC will, one hopes, soon be showing results. But even that is only part of the story: if a young player isn't given the right opportunities, being groomed in a proper second eleven in a serious, well-conducted senior competition, and then given a sustained run in the first team, where they bat up the order and/or are given a real chance to bowl, it's hard to see how they can be expected to do well. If that's combined with continued, properly focused coaching, they will eventually prosper, and the club will be stronger as a result.

And finally, of course, there are the players themselves.
In the end, you can blame whomever you like, but you have to take responsibility for your own development. I have to say that I have often found the complacency and arrogance of some young Dutch cricketers, generally on the basis of quite modest ability, truly shocking, and I'm not surprised if they stagnate. I recall Lefebvre coming back from an international youth tournament in the Caribbean tearing his hair out at the attitudes of many of his charges. All the opportunities in the world won't do you any good if you're not prepared to put in the hard miles, turning up to every practice that's going, listening to your coaches and trying to learn from what they tell you, analysing your own weaknesses honestly and positively, and demonstrating the will to succeed.

There are young players of real talent around, and if they have that will, and the changes currently taking place produce the revolution in structure and attitudes which is so sorely needed, there will be a time in the future when an overwhelmingly home-produced Dutch side will be capable, not only of holding its own against rival Associates, but of creating the sort of record against Full member opposition that Ireland has done. At this moment, however, Dutch cricket – and young Dutch cricketers – still have a long and demanding journey in front of them.

One of the most significant moments in the development of Dutch cricket was the decision in 1978 to allow player-coaches. The advent of really good players from all over the cricketing world transformed the game in The Netherlands, helping to pave the way for the national side to compete internationally as it has done in recent decades.

Among that first wave of professionals one of the most outstanding was the South African left-hander Hylton Ackerman, who played at VRA Amsterdam for three seasons and who died on 2 September last year at the age of 62. His old school, Dale College in King William's Town, has now produced a memorial number of its old boys' magazine in tribute to Hylton, and it provides moving testimony to how he was respected and loved wherever he played or coached.

Ackerman was 31 when he first arrived in the Amsterdamse Bos, and had been a first-class cricketer for fifteen years. He had made his debut for Border at the age of sixteen, hitting the first of his 20 first-class centuries the following season against Mike Smith's English tourists. After spells with North Eastern Transvaal and Natal he moved to Western Province in 1970-71, and continued to play for them for a decade, taking over the captaincy from Eddie Barlow in 1977.

In all he made 12,219 first-class runs at an average of 32.49, took 32 wickets with his medium-pacers, and claimed 199 catches. Had his heyday not coincided with the period of South Africa's isolation from international cricket he would certainly have made the Test side, and he proved his mettle in 1971-72, when he played in the World XI which took on Australia in a five-match series after the cancellation of a South African tour in which he would certainly have been involved.

Ackerman made 112 in the first 'Test' in Brisbane against an Australian attack comprising Dennis Lillee, Graham McKenzie, Doug Walters, Kerry O'Keeffe and Terry Jenner, and in the four matches he played in the series he totalled 323 runs at 46.14. He also had four successful seasons with Northamptonshire between 1968 and 1971.

VRA Amsterdam were languishing in the second division when he joined them in 1978, and in that first season he ensured their promotion, hitting 1082 runs at 90.17, with no fewer than six centuries, and taking 44 wickets at 7.84. In the Hoofdklasse the following year he made 826 at 75.09, and in 1980 655 at 43.67. The year after that, with the late Peter Swart as their new coach, VRA took the national championship for only the third time in their history.

By a strange quirk of cricketing fate, one of the opponents Ackerman encountered during his sojourn in The Netherlands was another of the finest players never to appear for South Africa, Dik Abed. Abed had arrived after a hugely successful stint with Enfield in the Lancashire League, and was now playing for HBS Den Haag. It's a poignant thought: a man who could never have played for his country because of his ethnicity taking on another who was denied the same opportunity because of the international reaction to that appalling system of discrimination.

In his later career, Ackerman had the opportunity as a coach to help correct the injustices of the past, and among the many players he is credited with having developed during his time as coach at Western Province, the South African Under-19s and South Africa A is Herschelle Gibbs.

He had been diagnosed with diabetes in his early twenties, and his latter years were overshadowed by that condition and the kidney problems it caused. But all those who contribute to his memorial emphasise his courage and resilience through it all.

He always maintained his links with VRA, and when his friends organised a benefit dinner for him in 2006, raising money for a private dialysis machine, several members of the club flew to Cape Town to be there. And it gave him great pleasure that when the first Dutch Twenty20 competition took place in 2007, VRA's guest player in their first match was his son HD, who had followed in his father's footsteps in a successful career with Western Province and Leicestershire, and who played four Tests in 1997-98.

A fine commentator and a great raconteur, Ackerman had many terrific stories. One of the best concerned his arrival in Adelaide with that World XI in 1972. The players were met at the airport by a friendly little man, whom Ackerman asked to carry his bags for him. The little man obliged. Later, over a cup of tea, Tony Greig asked him if he had anything to do with Australian cricket. 'Yes,' the little man replied, 'the name's Bradman.'

For cricket to develop beyond its present areas of strength in a way that is – to use an irritatingly fashionable term – truly sustainable, many things are needed. Not just an increase in the numbers of teams and players, but an expansion into communities which have no history of interest in the game, and increases in the numbers of grounds, umpires, coaches, and, yes, scorers.

This last is frequently neglected, so it was an extremely encouraging and enjoyable experience on Saturday to sit in on a beginners' course for scorers in Bonn, at which 17 participants came to terms with the demands of that esoteric art. Almost all came from the NordRhein Westfalen region, which had organised the event in association with the DCB, and over a period of some ten hours they learned the basics under the guidance of ICC Europe tutor Ray Holyer and then scored a series of sample matches.

By the end, they were handling with aplomb nightmare moments like a batsman being run out taking a second bye, and those of them who are players had developed a healthy understanding of why scorers can get a little tetchy if they're submitted to a barrage of questions when three wickets have just fallen in the space of four balls.

As Holyer said early in the day, scoring is often the poor relation in the cricket family, and players – who themselves tend to see looking after the scorebook as an appalling chore which they do for as short a time as possible – sometimes fail to appreciate the contribution of those who record their efforts on the field, and bring them the unwelcome news that they took one for 73 from their six overs.

With fourteen teams taking part in the NRW regional competition in the coming season, it can only be good for the development of the game if some of Saturday's participants are scoring on a regular basis this season, and who knows, it may not be long before one of more of them are ready to join ICC Europe's new scorers' panel. It's all part of the 'paracricket', and it needs lots more events like Saturday's if cricket's roots are to take a really lasting hold.

Next Thursday's general meeting of the KNCB seems likely to be unusually lively, with the issue of overseas players perhaps generating a good deal of excitement. The occasion for this, of course, is the initiative of High Performance adviser Jeroen Smits, who has, in his desire to ensure that the Dutch compete effectively in this season's Clydesdale Bank 40 competition and next year's World Cup, ensured that Australian Tom Cooper and New Zealander Derek de Boorder will be available for selection.

This could only be achieved, however, by enabling both players to base themselves in The Netherlands this summer, and that meant striking a deal with Dutch clubs. Smits therefore approached the clubs, with the result that Cooper will turn out for VRA Amsterdam and De Boorder for Hermes-DVS Schiedam. Both will be additional to the player-coaches the two clubs had already appointed.

It's a controversial approach, and no less so with the news that former New Zealand international Hamish Marshall has declared his desire to play for Ireland from April 2011 on the strength of his entitlement to an Irish passport. The news about Cooper and De Boorder stimulated a strong debate on CricketEurope's Dutch forum, and in this case the question of whether and to what extent the selection of overseas players is compatible with a sound youth development policy is compounded by the presence of these two players in the Dutch domestic competition.

The stakes have now been raised by a letter to the chairmen of the Topklasse clubs from KNCB chairman Marc Asselbergs, which makes clear that Smits' initiative was undertaken independently of the Board, which wishes to 'distance itself' from it. This is my translation of Asselbergs' letter:

A number of you were recently approached by Jeroen Smits with the question whether you could find room in your respective clubs during the coming competition for the selection of an overseas player with a Dutch passport; the background to this was, in addition to reinforcing your own club, offering in this way a potential strengthening of the Dutch eleven for the approaching World Cup.

While the KNCB Board has a certain sympathy with the thinking behind this, it nevertheless believes it desirable to inform you that this initiative was not instigated by the Board. The Board further wishes to make it clear that it distances itself from this action. For one thing, the Board does not find it appropriate to involve itself in any way with negotiating for players, and for another, such an action is potentially in conflict with the existing agreed rules with respect to the selection of paid players in [domestic] competition.

On the other hand, the Board is also well aware of the fact that the current basis of the Dutch team can benefit from greater breadth and depth. Attracting overseas players with a Dutch passport could perhaps, within certain limits, be part of a solution to this.

The Board therefore is in favour of once more putting the principle of selecting overseas players in the Dutch competition onto the agenda, with a view to either reaffirming or enhancing the existing agreements.

Since it is clear that Cooper and De Boorder will be paid by their respective clubs, and this in addition to the already-appointed player-coaches, the Board's concern – and presumably, that of clubs which did not find themselves in a position to avail themselves of Smits' offer – is understandable. But there's a certain amount of hypocrisy involved in this discussion, and we need to clear about exactly what the 'existing agreements' actually state.

The relevant passages are in article 20 of the KNCB's Huishouselijkreglement. This states that clubs are not permitted to field paid players, other than those receiving 'reasonable reimbursement of actual travel costs', except with a dispensation from the Board on certain specified grounds (20.2). One such exception is the appointment of a qualified player-coach, who must be nominated before 15 March (20.3-4). Furthermore (20.5), the Board may on application from a club grant a dispensation to a player who is being paid 'a modest cash sum' for coaching; such a dispensation may be claimed automatically for any player who has been a member of the club for at least the three previous years.

It is clear that the wiggle-room provided by this latter clause has been extensively used (not to say abused) by the leading clubs, and it is an open secret in Dutch cricket that many players are in fact paid, however this may be dressed up or disguised. It is, of course, frequently claimed that Club X or Y violates the rules to an outrageous degree, but it is rare for anything to be done about it, and one cannot help feeling that until now it has been in nobody's interest to rock the boat. The outrage in certain quarters when the KNCB started contractual negotiations with 'our players' did give the game away somewhat, making it difficult for many clubs now to adopt the high moral ground.

Asselbergs and his Board are clearly right to say that the time has come for a thorough review of the existing rules, and an honest discussion of the principle of amateurism at the top level of Dutch cricket. As the KNCB's new policy statement observes, there is a clear choice between resisting the move towards a greater degree of professionalisation and maintaining the ambition to remain among the leading Associates. Adopting a hypocritically purist stance at this stage won't serve the long-term interests of Dutch cricket.

The ACC Trophy 'Elite' tournament currently entering its closing phase in Kuwait gives rise to three very different sorts of observation.

One has to do with the increasing difficulties governing bodies and tournament organisers are evidently having over travel documents for players. Although such difficulties have arisen in the past, the problem which has been increasingly evident over the past fifteen months, since Afghanistan were forced into last-minute rescheduling of their flights to the WCL Division 3 tournament in Buenos Aires when UK authorities reportedly refused the squad permission to transit through London.

Then there were the farcical events surrounding the Under-19 World Cup qualifier in Canada, when Sierra Leone failed to make it at all and the ICC had to take extraordinary steps to get the Afghans there in time to take part. The cause wasn't helped, of course, by the post-tournament defections of players from the Ugandan and Afghan squads, with the result that special measures were imposed by the New Zealand authorities when the World Cup proper took place there in January.

Now, it seems, the Kuwaitis have also been extremely rigorous in their visa regime, so that Nepalese captain Gyanendra Malla has missed most of the tournament, Afghanistan's Mohammad Nabi and Hong Kong's Najeeb Amar have also been refused entry, and Bahrain were forced to withdraw from the tournament completely after three of their squad were denied visas.

It's all evidence of the way the world has changed over the past decade with the emergence of airborne terrorism and migration becoming an increasingly contentious issue, and it seems that cricket's sometimes amateurish authorities have been slow to respond. Perhaps it's time for the ICC to organise a special conference for its Associate and Affiliate members on the question of visa management?

It's also time for the Asian Cricket Council to take a long hard look at the structure of its tournaments. Its leading non-Test-playing member countries are undoubtedly among the world's strongest, but there's a sharp incline in talent and performance below that, and the absurdity of holding a ten-team 'Elite' tournament has again been underlined by a few appalling mismatches in Kuwait.

Nobody's interests are served – and certainly not the victims' – when Bhutan lose by 393 runs to Afghanistan, by 434 runs to the UAE, and then by 10 wickets to Malaysia, the winners taking just 32 deliveries to knock off the 69 they needed for victory. What do the losers learn from such humiliations?

Perhaps the ACC could do worse than to look at the structures adopted in other ICC regions, where six-team divisions have become the norm. A Division 1 involving Afghanistan, the UAE, Nepal, and three of Oman, Malaysia, Singapore, Kuwait and Bahrain would have a legitimate claim to be 'Elite', while a six-team Second Division would also be genuinely competitive.

The most striking feature of the tournament, however, has been the tight finishes involving Afghanistan, who lost by two wickets in the final over against the UAE and squeaked home by one run off the final ball against Malaysia. With Nabi missing and Hamid Hassan less than fully fit, the Afghans look somewhat less imposing than they have been over the past two years.

They remain a good side, but those two players have been crucial to their success, and it was, significantly, Hamid who saved them against Malaysia with a devastating eleven-ball, four-wicket spell which was instrumental in the Malaysians collapsing from 219 for four to 225 for nine. They must still be favourites to win the competition – they seem virtually certain to reach the semi-finals – but their performances so far should introduce a degree of realism into the outbursts of their more fanatical supporters.

If we except an Intercontinental Cup match against Zimbabwe's second string, Afghanistan have yet to face Full member opposition in any form of the game, and the notion that they have evolved so far beyond their Associate rivals that their only worthy opponents now are the likes of India and South Africa reveals a form of hubris which is, frankly, ludicrous. We all hope they do well in the World Twenty20 championship – and who would bet against their pulling off a shock there? – but the Afghans, even with Nabi and Hamid, are about as close to meeting Test countries on equal terms as I am to a knighthood.

Into my letterbox there arrived yesterday a copy, as promised, of the last-ever issue of Cricket Magazine. As we reported recently, hard economics have finally taken their toll of a much-loved feature of the Dutch cricketing scene, which has reported on the game in a variety of forms since it first appeared in 1931.

Much-loved, yes, but not, it seems, nearly enough. The demographics of vergrijzing (the gradual ageing of the population) combined with the lure of the internet have finally killed off the magazine, which has seen its list of subscribers fall away alarmingly in recent years, finally reaching the point where the publisher couldn't carry on. If the success of sites like this one have in part contributed to this process, I feel I owe all concerned a sincere apology.

The final issue has a suitably mournful cover: a depressed-looking Edgar Schiferli in his Dutch tracksuit, sitting on the balcony in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, chin in hand, watching his team failing to qualify for the next World Twenty20 championship. But the contents are, on the whole, a lot more upbeat than that, looking forward to a full and challenging with interviews with national skipper Peter Borren and coaches Peter Drinnen and Ed de Moura Correia.

There's also a typically interesting piece about Borren's predecessor Jeroen Smits, focused on his commitment to and hopes for his beloved HCC. Maurits Chabot's article contains a story which I hadn't heard before, and deserves to become a classic: during the 2007 World Cup match against Australia, Adam Gilchrist played and missed at three consecutive deliveries. 'I haven't trained three years,' came Smits's comment from behind the stumps, 'to see you miss every fucking ball!' Gilchrist went on to make a 64-ball 57, though even that was restrained by his magnificent standards.

If the point of this final issue was to demonstrate what we'll be missing, it certainly succeeds. There's a review of the winter's youth cricket by Marike Dickmann, a report on a charity dinner in support of the Maurits van Nierop Foundation – set up to support cricket for underprivileged children in South Africa, especially those who are, as Maurits himself was, dyslexic – a thoughtful piece by Geerhard de Grooth about the rise of Afghanistan, and a helpful article for prospective fast bowlers on how to avoid hamstring injuries by former international and present-day physiotherapist Jeroen Coster.

There is, however, a little good news, in the tailpiece by publisher Jeroen van Bergen. He takes up an idea which is already floated in KNCB chairman Marc Asselbergs' foreword: absorbing the annual statistical Kleefstra Almanack into a glossy, 132-page Cricket Jaarboek. With a full statistical analysis and lots of colour photos, that could even break through the language barrier which has inevitably restricted the readership of Cricket Magazine, making it a worthy shop window for Dutch cricket, even if much of the editorial material would inevitably and properly be in Dutch.

In the meantime, Dutch cricket fans are promised some kind of online newsletter. That, in whatever form it takes, and the official news published on the main KNCB website will be some compensation, perhaps, for the demise of the hard-copy magazine, at least for those who are regularly online. CricketEurope will continue to provide detailed coverage of Dutch international and domestic cricket; but perhaps it's time for the Dutch-language website Cricket Nederland, which flourished briefly in the wake of the 2007 World Cup, to consider making a comeback?

A poster on the International Forum the other day was trying to make sense of the intricate structure of the ICC World Cricket League, and indeed he can be forgiven for being a little confused. It's a great initiative, but it can't be said to have the most transparent set-up in the world.

One source of confusion is that there are actually two cycles running between the 2009 World Cup qualifying tournament and that scheduled for 2013, both of which offer the possibility of reaching that competition, and beyond it the 2015 World Cup.

The first kicked off with Division 7 in Guernsey a year ago, and has now reached the Division 4 stage, to be contested in Italy this summer. This strand will eventually lead to a Division 2 tournament in 2011, the venue of which has not yet been decided, four teams from which will join the six Division 1 sides – which qualify automatically – in the 2013 World Cup qualifier.

That leaves two places in that qualifying tournament still up for grabs, and that's where the second cycle of WCL events comes into play. The ICC has decided to expand the WCL structure to eight divisions, and this new cycle will begin in Kuwait at the end of this year.

Eight teams will take part there, with the best two of them joining Botswana, Japan, Nigeria and Norway in another Division 7 tournament in 2011. And from there it's possible to progress all the way to a Division 3 competition at the beginning of 2013, from which the top two will become the final pair of teams in the World Cup qualifier.

So it's theoretically possible for, say, the Bahamas or Kuwait to do what Afghanistan did and progress from the lowest level of the system to ODI status and the brink of playing in the World Cup itself. And as if that weren't complicated enough, another cycle will actually begin before the 2013 World Cup qualifier, with a Division 8 tournament in late 2012 which will commence the qualification process for the 2017 World Cup qualifier and the 2019 World Cup!

There's one other element in the ICC system which ought to be noted: although seven WCL divisions with six teams and one with eight might be thought to imply 50 participating countries, the actual number is much smaller, at 38. That's because of the two-up-two-down arrangement, which means that a six-team division almost always includes two teams from the one below and two from that above.

It's all very new, and it's obviously still settling down. At the bottom, teams qualify on a regional basis, which is why the variation is standard is sometimes fairly extreme.

The leading Asian sides have dominated so far: Afghanistan, of course, and Bahrain have contributed a lot to this, but Hong Kong, Singapore and Nepal have all finished in the top two of their division once. No doubt that's why both Kuwait and Bhutan will take part in Division 8, although recent events have suggested that in Bhutan's case this elevation may be decidedly premature.

At the other extreme, the East Asia-Pacific and European regions have suffered the lion's share of relegations: Fiji started out in Division 3 in 2007, but will be playing in Division 6 when it next takes place, with Papua New Guinea, in Division 3, the only EAP side which has been able to hold its own against global competition. Of the European sides, Italy and Norway have both struggled, while Jersey, after starting well at home in Division 5, have twice found life difficult on foreign soil and joined Fiji in the drop to Division 6.

The World Cricket League is a great addition to the international calendar, and it brings global competition to countries who would otherwise only be playing against their neighbours, giving them a whole new order of aspiration.

But for it to achieve its full potential, two things need to happen: the Associates and Affiliates must further sharpen up their development plans, and the glaring anomaly whereby the Asian region, with less than 20% of the ICC's Associate and Affiliate members, receives half the global development funding must be corrected. That's a scandal which shames the ICC and casts a shadow over the entire programme.

The visit to Jamaica which Ireland are currently engaged in is more than an enormously valuable warm-up for the forthcoming World Twenty20 tournament: it is both a tribute to how far the Irish have come on the international scene and a model of how the leading Associates and Affiliates can improve further.

The format for the tour – a three-day first-class match, two one-dayers (including an ODI against the West Indies), and four T20 games – provides additional experience and exposure in all three forms of the game, and although the results so far have been mixed, the win in a T20 match against Jamaica and a decent performance in the three-day game have been encouraging. Irish hearts will have been lifted, too, by the reduction of the West Indies to 1 for two in Thursday's ODI, even if a Sarwan century ultimately saw the home side through to a comfortable victory.

The reluctance of many Full members to contribute significantly to the ICC's High Performance Program has been a frequent subject for complaint, and with Canada also having been in the Caribbean this month it's gratifying to see the West Indies doing their bit. Not for the first time, either: it was as long ago as 2004 that Kenya, then pushing hard for elevation to Test status, took part in the domestic Carib Beer Cup. Unfortunately, a dispute between the Kenya Cricket Association and the leading players meant that the Kenyans fielded a weakened squad, and the experiment wasn't repeated.

That has left only Namibia getting regular, competitive first-class experience against Full member opposition, taking part in the South African three-day competition, and otherwise the opportunities for the Associates to pit themselves against players from the Test countries, outside global tournaments, have been limited to the occasional ODI and participation by Ireland and Scotland in the English domestic one-day system.

Financial considerations and an ever-more-demanding international programme make it difficult for the Associates and Afghanistan, even with the support of ICC High Performance director Richard Done, to get a regular diet of ODIs against the Full members. But the gap between the top ten and the rest is so significant that games against first-class opposition also provide a severe test, and one from which the amateur, or at best semi-professional, players from the developing countries stand to learn a great deal.

So let's hope that this current tour inspires Ireland's rivals to look for similar opportunities, not only in the Caribbean, but also in South Africa, the Sub-continent, and the Antipodes. In the 1990s, before the High Performance Program was even thought of, the Dutch organised tours of New Zealand, India and South Africa in which they took on first-class opposition. Full member A teams, and first-class sides like Rawalpindi and Eastern Province, visited the Netherlands on their way to England.

That was, of course, before television and the money men took over. But it's ironic that for all the ICC's investment in development, such things have actually become more difficult over the past fifteen or twenty years. Valuable as the Netherlands' two recent visits to India may have been, one can't help thinking that they should be facing Ranji Trophy sides rather than club teams. Inevitably, it all comes back to money, but the Irish have, not for the first time, clearly pointed the way forward.

One of the things I'm doing at the moment is working on a database of all Dutch international scorecards, which will make its appearance on our StatsZone in due course. This involves, in part, working through the KNCB's very impressive archive of scores, most of which are now housed in the National Archives in Den Haag.

And the other day I happened across an extraordinary performance, surely one of the most remarkable innings ever played in international cricket. It was in Brussels in 1935, in a match between Belgium and the Netherlands at the old Lever Brothers ground, and the player concerned was Andrè van Baasbank.

Van Baasbank had first played for his country two years earlier, and in his six matches to date had performed moderately with the bat, his best effort 53 against the MCC in his second international game.

The contest with Belgium was, in the manner of those days, a two-innings game played in a single day – Dutch international matches against better opposition were played over two days, but the Belgians were obviously regarded as second-class opponents, and they only got one day.

The Dutch were, indeed, traditionally much stronger, but this time things were a bit different. Belgium had an opening bowler named MacGregor, and after the home side had assembled 155, Arie Terwiel taking four for 45 for the Netherlands, MacGregor shot the visitors out for 76. MacGregor took seven for 36, and might have had eight had one of the Dutch players not been absent.

The two first innings had occupied 83 overs between them, and it seemed unlikely that Belgium would be able to force an outright win. Nevertheless, they enforced the follow-on, and when MacGregor's new-ball partner OC Papineau struck in the opening over another rout seemed possible.

Enter Van Baasbank, promoted from No. 8 in the first innings, when he had managed 4. He faced the last ball of Papineau's over, and came back on strike to take the last delivery of Macgregor's first over, by which time the other opener had gone and the Netherlands were on 3 for two. He took a single, and then launched himself into Papineau's next, hitting two boundaries and a two.

And when 11.4 overs later stumps were drawn, the Dutch were on 110 for three, with Van Baasbank 100 not out. The third-wicket partnership produced 51 runs, of which Van Baasbank made 48, the unbroken fourth-wicket stand 57, Van Baasbank contributing 52 of them. There can surely have been few innings anywhere in which one batsman dominated the scoring so completely.

Thanks to the assiduous record-keeping of KNCB archivist Brinio Kleefstra, who faithfully transcribed the scorecard for each match into a master-record, it is possible to be pretty certain that Van Baasbank faced just 55 balls in reaching his century. Altogether, he hit ten singles, three twos, 15 fours and four sixes.

It is, of course, impossible to say anything about the quality of the bowling, or the conditions – the Lever Brothers ground has, I assume, long since disappeared. But the fact that the Dutch had been dismissed for 76 in their first innings suggests that it wasn't exactly a batting paradise, which makes Van Baasbank's effort all the more remarkable.

He played for his country four more times, taking part in the Netherlands' first-ever match against a Test country, South Africa, a month after his Brussels triumph, but in his six further innings he managed only 28 runs, ending his international career with a pair against APF Chapman's XI in Den Haag in 1937.

But for that heroic 55-ball century alone he deserves a permanent place in Dutch cricketing history.

So this time there was nothing to compare with The Netherlands' stunning opening-day victory over England at Lord's in last year's World Twenty20 tournament, or even Ireland's defeat of Bangladesh, to lift the hearts of the supporters of Associates and Affiliates cricket. One of the great unknowns is what would have happened at the aptly-named Providence on Tuesday had the weather not intervened, and that was as close as either of the qualifiers came to pulling off an upset.

Ireland are, of course, old hands by now at this sort of thing, and it showed as they recovered from their disappointing collapse against the West Indies to contain England to a modest 120 for eight. It was perhaps inevitable that the main obstacle to their doing even better was a player who used to be one of their own: Eoin Morgan. Without his 37-ball 45, England's effort would probably have been paltry indeed.

After an unusually thorough preparation in the Caribbean, the outcome of their opening match must have been a big disappointment, especially after the bowlers – George Dockrell and Alex Cusack in particular – had done well to hold the opposition to 138 for nine. And it was the tyro Dockrell again, this time with the veteran Trent Johnston, who had a key role in keeping England quiet.

For Afghanistan, on the other hand, it was another venture into the unknown, and one which was always likely to end in tears. As has been the case ever since they broke onto the world stage in Jersey two years ago, it was the bowling which impressed most, with Hamid Hassan once again the star of the show.

His body may be protesting more and more at the demands he is making on it, but his heart is huge and his skill considerable. Even defending a slender 115 for eight against India he gave his all, and his three for 21 against South Africa confirmed – as if we didn't already know – that he is one of the finest bowlers outside the Full member countries. Shapoor Zadran and Samiullah Shenwari, too, performed well against a level of batsmanship they haven't had to face before.

But the batting really struggled against Full member attacks. Only Noor Ali and Asghar Stanikzai managed to reach double figures against India, and then the whole of the top and middle order was blown away by South Africa's pacemen as the Afghans were reduced to a desperate 32 for eight. It took some spirited hitting from Sami, Mirwais Ashraf and Hamid, assisted by Graham Smith's removal of his foot from the accelerator pedal, to get them up to a comparatively respectable 80.

It's not just that in Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel the batsmen were facing quicker bowling than they have generally had to confront before: it's the command of line and length and the movement coupled with great speed which makes the difference between the level Afghanistan have reached and the world of the Test countries. The players probably knew this in advance; many of their fans undoubtedly didn't.

The gap remains very big indeed, and one can't help wondering whether the High Performance Program in its present form is enough to bridge it. For all the investment, the organisation of specialist training camps and so on, the opportunities for the leading Associates and Afghanistan to play against top-class opposition are simply too few and far between.

As long as money dominates the thinking of the Full members, and that's not something that's likely to change any time soon, the non-Test countries seem doomed largely to go on playing each other, with occasional exposure to the best. Ireland's recent venture in the Caribbean, Namibia's participation in the South African domestic set-up, and the presence of Scotland and The Netherlands in the ECB's Clydesdale Bank 40 competition are all positive signs, but it will need a lot more progress along these lines if the global development of cricket is ever definitively to succeed.

Hilarious to read on the website Cricket Nepal ('Anything/Everything About Nepal's Cricket') that the Nepalese cricket authorities have been surprised, indeed shocked, to discover that the World Cricket League Division 4 tournament, to which Nepal were promoted in highly controversial circumstances, is to be played on artificial pitches.

'This is shocking,' CAN president Binaya Raj Pandey is quoted as saying. 'We do not play regularly in astro-turf. We do have such pitch but we are using them only for practice matches.

'Only Middle East nations use astro-turf in Asia.'

Just why the Nepalis are so stunned by this discovery is far from clear: it would have taken five minutes' research on the internet to establish that there are no turf pitches in Italy, and the photos from last year's European Under-15 Division 2 championship, played on the same grounds, show the conditions pretty clearly.

The CAN is reportedly asking the ICC for additional help with preparation for the tournament, although it's also far from clear why this is a greater cause for concern than other countries where cricket is played on artificial surfaces having to adjust to the turf pitches in Jersey, Singapore … or Nepal.

I personally happen to think that it's daft for the ICC to have allocated WCL4 to Italy, but the decision was made a long time ago, and there's nothing secret about the prevailing conditions. It would be great if the Italians had been able to develop turf squares, and perhaps if the ICC's Global Development funding were distributed a little more equitably – rather than the Asian region's 18 Associate and Affiliate nations snaffling half of it and leaving the other 79 to manage on the rest – it might have been possible for ICC Europe to help them along the way.

Fortunately, Nepalese captain Paras Khadka seems to be a bit more philosophical about the 'news' than his president, and clearly regards the challenge of Italian conditions as no more than the rub of the green – or in this case, the sun-scorched brown.

Given the evident expectation of many Nepalese fans that they will qualify for the 2015 World Cup, the pressure will really be on when the side plays in Italy in July. They will probably find WCL4 a very different kind of experience than their last visit to Europe, when they finished third in WCL5 in a damp, cold Jersey and just missed out on the chance to progress further. But then, there are many who think that in view of the events in Kathmandu in February (which don't, it must be said, get much attention on the Cricket Nepal website) they'll be very fortunate to be there at all.

It is, of course, excellent news that the ICC has approved the granting of ODI status to Voorburg's lovely new Westvliet ground, and with improvements at Het Schootsveld in Deventer, Thurlede entering the international arena as well, and several more clubs reported or rumoured to be considering the laying of turf squares, the prospects of this aspect of the game in The Netherlands have never been rosier.

There are now seven turf squares at six clubs, and it begins to become imaginable that at some point in the not too distant future the KNCB might be in a position to host a major global tournament, something larger and more demanding than this season's World Cricket League Division 1 event, like a World Cup qualifier or an Under-19 World Cup.

The emergence of Westvliet, of course, also improves the logistics, plugging the substantial gap between Amstelveen in the north and Rotterdam in the south. But that still leaves Den Haag somewhat underprovided, given the relative strength of the city's clubs.

It's hard to see that any one of HCC, Quick or HBS – with the just conceivable exception of Quick – is likely to be able to develop turf pitches given their present accommodation. Attractive as De Diepput is, it's the size of a pictorial postage stamp, and there's no way it can be extended. HBS have been forced by their football section to go over to an experimental astroturf outfield, and it's not so long ago that there were reports that Quick might go the same way.

All three clubs are multi-sport organisations, with the footballers largely calling the shots and the availability of the ground, especially at the start of the cricket season, increasingly problematic. So the result is that Den Haag, with the exception of nearby Voorburg, seems doomed to lag behind developments elsewhere in the country.

It is, I think, a situation which calls for radical thinking. I have suggested in the past that the cricketers of Quick and HBS could benefit from a joint initiative, well short of a merger of the clubs, to create a purpose-built cricket facility. And there's no reason why, with a bolder vision, HCC could not be involved as well.

It must be galling for the Haagse (and for Rood en Wit in Haarlem) to realise that their days as hosts of The Netherlands' major matches are definitively over, but in the former case at least there's no reason why that should be so.

What I'm proposing is a long-term plan to develop a national cricket centre in Den Haag, involving two grounds with turf pitches, turf practice nets, and an indoor facility. If the three clubs all played their home matches there it would be in pretty constant use, and it could easily become the premier venue for the sport in the country.

It would, of course, require a big investment, and it certainly couldn't be achieved overnight. But it would open up the chance for many more talented young players to gain the experience of playing regularly on grass that they so obviously need, and it would be a crucial enhancement of The Netherlands' ability to enhance major ICC events.

Key elements in such a project would be persuading the local authority of the benefits it would bring in terms of visitor income, and the Dutch Olympic Committee of its value in improving playing standards. Investors/sponsors would also be needed, but that could have the collateral advantage of raising the sport's profile in the Dutch business community. The KNCB would need to lend its support, in fund-raising and the provision of the necessary infrastructure.

One obstacle would undoubtedly be the innate conservatism and self-interest of the clubs concerned. But they wouldn't need to give up their own identities, and with a guarantee of separate clubhouses they could also ensure that their bar income was protected, in well-designed catering facilities which could actually enhance their opportunities for income generation. Linking the development to, for example, squash courts could also increase usage and build up income. The clubs would, naturally, continue to use their existing complexes for lower-grade, social and youth cricket.

Some may think that I've finally taken leave of my senses even to float such an idea. But no-one ever got anywhere by thinking small, and I'm convinced that something along these lines needs to be done if Den Haag proper, with its rich cricketing history, isn't to become a by-water.

The role of 'foreigners' in Dutch cricket is, it seems, not an issue which is likely to go away any time soon. Whether we're talking about the national side or the domestic competition, one reads or hears comments about the 'non-Dutch' which often smack of prejudice (to put it no more strongly) than of considered thought. As I write this, the Dutch are voting in a general election in which immigration, religion and race are higher up the agenda than ever, even if they have failed to ignite the electorate in the way one or two deeply unpleasant politicians obviously hoped for. Sport and society are always closely connected, and I think we need to tread carefully here.

There is a legitimate debate to be had about the right balance between home-produced and overseas-produced players in Dutch national sides, and another about the contribution of immigrant players – of all ethnicities – in domestic cricket, but both need to be informed by facts rather than unconsidered assumptions, and by rational argument rather than by xenophobia.

A post on CricketEurope's Dutch forum recently suggested that a difference between the national sides of the 1960s and 1970s and those of today was that the former consisted entirely of 'Netherlanders'. So who exactly are these 'non-Dutch' players who currently turn out for The Netherlands? If possession of a Dutch passport makes you a national – as it surely does – then Peter Borren, Eric Szwarczynski, and even Tom Cooper and Brad Kruger, are as Dutch as Bas Zuiderent or Mark Jonkman. Mudassar Bukhari, Adeel Raja and Muhammad Kashif may have been born in Pakistan, but they learned their cricket in Den Haag, Amstelveen and Schiedam, and they, too, hold Dutch passports.

In the comparatively leisurely days of friendly matches against English teams and off-duty touring sides, there was far less at stake than in an era of million-dollar High Performance programmes and so on. Would the critics of the presence of 'foreigners' in the Dutch side prefer to see the Netherlands go into the Clydesdale Bank 40 League or the World Cup fielding only Dutch-produced players? Would they care to forecast what the outcome might be?

These questions imply no disrespect to those locally-produced players who are good enough to hold their own at this level – or even those who aren't. Alexei Kervezee is currently demonstrating that given talent and the right attitude an alumnus of Dutch youth cricket can make it on the county scene, while the emergence of Mark Jonkman shows that the Netherlands (with a bit of help from the ICC) can produce quality players on occasion. Those questions are just an appeal for realism about the shallowness of the pool and the comparatively rudimentary nature of the development structures, and the benefits of a well-planned policy to draw on those offspring of the Dutch diaspora who are keen and able to contribute to the continued success of the national sides.

It is sometimes suggested that such imports keep talented Dutch-produced youngsters out of the side. In present circumstances that is, quite simply, nonsense. As I have argued before, it's very hard to find young players whose performances in domestic competition make a strong case for their inclusion, and that point is reinforced by the slightly unseemly spectacle of the national 'selectors' casting around, admittedly at very short notice, to fill the national team. That's a point to which I shall return, as well as to the issue of the domestic competition, but it's interesting – and not particularly pleasant – to ponder on where we'd be without a healthy sprinkling of those overseas-produced 'foreigners'.

When I was a kid my local grade club, South Perth, regularly contributed at least three or four players to the Western Australian State side. That meant, among other things, that in those days of rail travel they were away for a month in the middle of the season, playing Sheffield Shield matches against the other four states from Brisbane to Adelaide over four successive weekends. They were also involved, of course, in the return matches in Perth.

If anyone had suggested that the club should be allowed to rearrange their First Grade fixtures because the core of the team was absent, they would have been referred to the nearest psychiatrist. And that's not an unusual situation: across the cricketing world, teams at lower levels don't avoid playing when their top players are called up to a higher level. They get on with it, and give their reserves a chance to step up and show what they can do.

The unpleasant events of last week surrounding the match between Excelsior '20 Schiedam and VRA Amsterdam showed what can happen when clubs are allowed to dictate terms to the national body. It was a stramash which reflected little credit on anyone involved, although the match itself was played in a good spirit and produced what was probably the most satisfactory result in the circumstances.

Although in one sense the KNCB's procedures worked well, a situation in which the Board overturned the decision of the competition manager, only to have its own ruling overturned by the Appeals Committee just 36 hours before the match was to be played, is clearly unacceptable. Players did not hear about the match until, in some cases, 15 hours before the first ball was to be bowled.

VRA may have been technically correct in insisting that the match should be played that Saturday, but there seems to have been little or no communication between the clubs, and the suspicion remains, at least in Excelsior circles, that the absence of coach Ed Cowan and keeper Marcel Schewe was a factor in their determination. Excelsior's arguments against playing, equally, were far from strong: their youth tournament, hastily shifted to another part of the complex, was played successfully, and they managed to set up for their gala day on Sunday.

It would be possible to have a lively metaphysical discussion about whether a match should be 'preponed', that is, played before the date it was originally scheduled. It seems that HCC, earlier in the season, argued successfully that this should not be the case, but this time that's exactly what happened. But the season is so compressed, and the fixture list so crowded, that missing any opportunity to play risks greater problems later.

There's a simple answer to all of this: scrap the rule which allows matches to be rearranged because of the absence of national team players. In other words, join the rest of the world. It would mean that clubs would need to ensure that they had suitable back-up players, which might stimulate some of them to devote more time, effort and resources to developing their youth. It would probably mean that the clubs that did best were those that were strong clubs, not just a first-team of 'stars'.

The argument is sometimes advanced that such a change would lead to clubs refusing to release 'their' players for the national side. It's hard to imagine a clearer example of the tail wagging the dog. Any club prepared to put its own narrow interests ahead of those of Dutch cricket in general to that degree really has no business being in operation at all. The clubs are important, yes, but the financial security of the game now depends on the success of the national sides, and the ability of the clubs to continue hangs on that success. Just as no player is bigger than the game, neither is any club. And that goes for administrators as well.

There have been so many talking points in Dutch cricket over the past few, remarkably hectic weeks that it's hard to know where to start: the inconsistency of the national side; the disappointing results of Dutch youth teams over the European tournament season; the problems with pitches during the World Cricket League Division 1 tournament; the rumours of changes in international cricket which could be disastrous for the top Associates and Affiliates.

But let's kick off again with something that is very immediate, at least in Dutch domestic cricket: the experimental structure in the top three divisions of the competition. Established on a somewhat ad hoc basis just before the start of the season, the three-phase set-up was an attempt to deal with the complaint of some leading clubs that the reduction from ten teams per division to eight would leave them playing too little cricket.

So it was decided that after the first series of home-and-away matches in the Topklasse, Hoofdklasse and Eerste Klasse, a total of 14 fixtures per side, there would be a second phase, comprising a single round of three games between the top four and the bottom four in each division. In the Topklasse this would establish the final rankings for the championship play-offs, and in all three divisions the side which finished last after all 17 matches would then face a relegation play-off against the winners of the division below.

I have to say that at the time I thought this was an ingenious solution to the problem, and in some ways it was. But in the Topklasse, at least, the addition of those three extra playing dates has, in practice, compounded the difficulties of rescheduling matches because of the commitments of players in the national side and produced a programme which, frankly, puts unreasonable demands on the top players, while the actual detail of how the split works has proved something of a nightmare.

The central issue is the carry-forward of results from the first phase into the second. Only results against the other teams in the same half of the table are allowed to count, and in a competition where pretty much every team is capable of beating every other one, that is bound to produce some pretty random outcomes.

It is also, apparently, based on a false analogy. It seems to be modelled on competitions like the World Cup qualifier, where teams progressing from the group phase to the Super Eight take with them the points they have gained against the other Super Eight sides from their group. But they will not be playing those teams again in the Super Eights and they haven't faced the other four so far, whereas in the Dutch case it's the same opponents involved in both phases.

And some of the results of this system have been very strange indeed. Not only has VRA Amsterdam, after finishing second in the Topklasse after the first phase, dropped to fourth before the start of the second, but in the Hoofdklasse Bloemendaal's starting position in the second phase was entirely dependent on whether Voorburg (whom they had beaten twice) or HCC 2 (to whom they had lost twice) made it into the top half of the table. In the end it was HCC 2, and that cost Bloemendaal four points. That was effectively the difference between a crack at the championship and being consigned to fourth place.

Spare a thought, too, for Sparta 1888, who ended the first phase of the Eerste Klasse in sixth place, with wins against all four of the leading sides in the division to their credit. But because none of those matches count in the second phase, they have dropped to bottom and are in serious danger of relegation to the Overgangsklasse. That is very, very unfair, and threatens the credibility of the entire system.

It can also be argued that this second phase has produced more than its fair share of dead rubbers, matches that have no real significance for anything. That's less clear-cut: as ACC and Rood en Wit demonstrated on Sunday, any win is worth fighting for, and these games also give an opportunity for experimentation with next season in mind.nBut there can be no question that the system is seriously flawed, and that the review of the domestic competition which is proposed for the autumn will need to have a good hard look at how it can be improved. If the second phase isn't scrapped entirely, taking through either all the first-phase points or none at all would be better than the present arrangement.

I would be dishonest if I didn't admit that this week's ICC audio interview with newly-elected Vice-President Alan Isaac is deeply disappointing. He's the man who's just been elected to this office after a reported revolt by the dominant Asian-African bloc against the nomination of former Australian Prime Minister John Howard. It means he'll be with us until 2014, for two years as Vice-President and then two more in the President's chair.

I bow to no-one in my personal dislike of Howard, although the supposed issues on which he was black-balled, his very public stance against the regime of Robert Mugabe and his criticism of Murathitharan's action, are probably the only ones on which I think he has ever been right. As distinct from Right, which he is on almost everything. Isaac, by contrast, was presumably seen as a Safe Pair of Hands who hadn't offended anyone, but that doesn't mean that what he has to say isn't important.

What, he was asked by a predictably sycophantic interviewer, were the main challenges and priorities for the ICC in the coming four years? And he immediately identified the Future Tours Program as Issue No. 1.

It was, in fact, the ICC's media release on this subject which led me to listen to the interview in the first place. The release states:

'Talking of the immediate challenges, Mr Isaac says: ìThe most significant ongoing project at the moment is to get an agreement on the Future Tours Programme. It is vitally important to the ICC and the Full Members to understand and know what their future commitments are <b>so that they can sell their television and commercial rights [my emphasis].î'

When you listen to the interview itself, he says it twice, first of the ICC, and then of the Full Members. And the awful truth is that that is what the ICC has become: a machine for making money out of its television and commercial rights. Nothing else matters. The trumpery and largely spurious individual rankings with which we are constantly bombarded are little more than a way of keeping commercial partners happy. The pettifogging rules and regulations which operate at tournaments are purely designed to protect the interests of commercial partners. The absurd prioritisation of the USA (for years a near-terminal basket-case) and China over the needs of other Associates and Affiliates is driven purely by institutional greed and the pursuit of new 'markets'.

There are lots of good reasons for looking hard at the Future Tours Programme. One is the overload on players which results from the Full Members' relentless pursuit of profit. Another is the need to ensure the future of Test cricket over the relentless march of Twenty20, now threatening to invade even ODIs. And yet another is the way in which the Full Members are largely blind and deaf to the needs of their less privileged fellows, handing them crumbs from their table and largely ignoring the pleas of the High Performance countries for more challenging fixtures.

That is a subject on which Mr Isaac has a few words to say towards the conclusion of his interview. His big dream for cricket, he reveals, is to 'close some of the gap' on football, the leading global sport. But their great advantage, he adds, is that they have many countries which can compete at the top level, and cricket has only ten, with big gaps in performance even among them. There's barely a mention of the ICC's other 95 members, except a vague suggestion that it would be nice if a few of them could compete more effectively.

But that, of course, is the million-dollar question. Welcome as the ICC's spending on its High Performance and Global Development programmes is, it is nowhere near enough, its distribution is disgracefully inequitable, and it is far from clear that it is being spent in the right areas, or on the right things. Furthermore, there are rumours and reports of changes in the structures of global competition which seem to be driven in part by the desire for ever-greater profit and which, if not handled correctly, could make things worse rather than better.

No-one questions the fact that it is the ten Full Members, and especially half-a-dozen or so of them, who are the ICC's big earners, generating the income which keeps the whole show on the road, and it would obviously be stupid to prejudice that. But that doesn't mean that they have a right to anything they want, or that they should be allowed to undermine the great globalisation project which has been one of the cornerstones of ICC policy over the past decade.

If Mr Isaac and his colleagues on the ICC Board are serious about closing the gap on football by taking the globalisation of cricket forward, they will give these issues serious thought, starting with the recognition that those 95 member-countries, too, are 'stakeholders' in the future of the game. And that means stepping for a moment outside the charmed circle of the Full Members and their self-interested style of governance. It would be reassuring to see some sign that they are interested in or capable of doing so.

The news that Mark Jonkman has been suspended pending extensive remedial work on his bowling action comes as a tragic blow to the player himself, and a serious setback to Dutch preparations for next year's World Cup. But it also raises important questions about how matters could ever have reached this point, and about what now needs to be done to ensure that more players don't find themselves in Jonkman's unhappy situation.

Questions were certainly raised about Mark Jonkman's action as long ago as 2006, when he attended an ICC winter training camp in Pretoria, and some remedial work was done at that stage. But since then he has played in some 58 matches in the domestic competition, bowling more than 2200 deliveries and taking 71 wickets. He has also played 23 times for his country, in ODIs (including two matches in the 2007 World Cup), Intercontinental Cup matches, and the CB 40 competition, and until now he has never, apparently, been reported as having a suspect action.

Furthermore, he has presumably been bowling with this action from the beginning, playing junior cricket for his club, HCC, and representing The Netherlands in five European youth tournaments between 2001 and 2004. There, too, as far as I am aware, no questions were raised, formally at least, about the legality of his action.

Given the extent of the problem which has now been revealed by the University of Western Australia's analysis – more than twice the permitted extension threshold – it simply beggars belief that dozens of umpires have watched from square leg without taking steps to deal with the issue.

It is, of course, true that analysis of bowling actions has moved on considerably since Jonkman began playing cricket, and that much stricter regulations are now in force than was true a decade ago. Those regulations now place very substantial obligations upon ICC members, and it is fair to ask how many of them have actually established – or in many cases, are in a position to establish – the 'policy and strategy' which is required of them.

Specifically, every board, including that of the KNCB, must have a group of bowling advisors, comprising 'an ex-international fast bowler, an ex-international spinner, and ex-international umpire and, if available, a human movement specialist'. They must also have an established mechanism for indentifying bowlers with suspect actions, with primary responsibility lying with the umpires, and for all national age group tournaments a bowling action review panel must be appointed and in attendance; this panel should include a human movement specialist and two bowling experts with appropriate bowling or coaching experience. Any player reported as having a suspect action must be referred to the bowling advisory group.

Does the KNCB in fact have such structures in place? If so, I've never seen any evidence of them. And equally, I'm not aware that anything this formal or structured exists at European regional tournaments, where there is a key opportunity to monitor young bowlers at the outset of their international careers, although I believe less formal monitoring is supposed to take place.

No doubt financial considerations play a large part in this: taken at their most literal, the ICC regulations require Turkey, Bulgaria and Estonia to have the same procedures as Australia, England or Sri Lanka, and that would clearly be absurd. But for those countries taking part in major global tournaments the avoidance of situations like that in which Mark Jonkman is now enmeshed should be a high priority, and non-compliance with the ICC's requirements to the greatest feasible extent would be just plain foolish.

It's not as if Jonkman is the only bowler in Dutch cricket whose action raises eyebrows. Some would say that his is not even the most blatant. Club coaches who fail to identify and deal with this bear a considerable responsibility, as do umpires and administrators – and journalists – who have chosen to turn a blind eye. The last thing we need now is a witch hunt. But the time has come to do something about the problem, and to do it properly. One Mark Jonkman case is more than enough.

Having been a scorer for much of my adult life, I know how keeping the book can be both an immensely rewarding and a profoundly frustrating activity, depending on the attitude of the players, umpires, administrators and supporters you are there to serve. For the most part, happily, it's the former that prevails, and one learns to live with the questions that are hurled at you as you battle to deal with the fall of three wickets in four balls, a catcher who's wearing the wrong number on his shirt, or the seven additional extras (including four otherthrows) that have just come from a no-ball.

To be honest, I've never personally come across that last one, but you see what I mean.

In view of all that, though, I want to pay tribute to the scorers – and other informants, like managers and club officials – who make it possible for CricketEurope, on a weekly basis, to provide regular updates on the progress of Topklasse matches. And the same applies, of course, to those scorers and match managers who perform the same service during European tournaments.

They are the ones who have to remember to phone or text me, ideally every ten overs, with news of the totals and any notable individual performances, and put up with my phoning them if they happen to forget. Either way, the time for an update almost inevitably coincides with the fall of a wicket or a spate of boundaries, and I cannot stress enough how grateful I am for their diligence and willingness to put up with my questions.

This year, moreover, they have willingly shared with me the additional post-match details which enable us to provide more complete scorecards and statistics, including strike rates, boundaries and bowlers' extras, which can be found in the season's Topklasse StatsZone.

So take a bow Lisa Heggelman (Excelsior '20), Marik Bijl (Hermes-DVS), Marije de Wijs (Rood en Wit), Hetty Reijmer (VOC) and Jaap Krulder (Quick Haag), and those who have less regularly, but no less vitally, kept me up to date from the clubs which have not had the benefit of a regular scorer. Without your help hundreds of supporters around the world would not be able to keep track of what's going on at the Topklasse grounds, or check via our new mobile service on events at matches other than the one they're watching.

The Netherlands is fortunate in having a dedicated and highly competent group of scorers, and it is to be hoped that by next season still more clubs will be able to call on one or more of their members to perform one of the vital, but too often neglected, functions in the game.

Faithful readers of CricketEurope may recall that I caused a bit of a stir two or three years ago by proposing a change in the points system for Dutch domestic cricket, at least in the top divisions. People whose knowledge and opinions I respect dismissed the idea out of hand – a win is a win, they said, and anything else would encourage negative cricket.

I wasn't convinced at the time, and continue to believe that a well thought out system of bonus points can add to the game, rather than detracting from it. It is a fact that many one-day games are decided well before the end, with one side's batting either collapsing for a score which is too low to defend effectively, or losing early wickets and dropping behind the rate when chasing a substantial target. This is just as true of the Dutch Topklasse as it is of ODIs.

You can have a system of bonus points for batting and bowling, but in conditions where some games are shortened by the weather, this can become somewhat inequitable. It would be preferable, I think, to introduce a much simpler method, sometimes used in one-day competitions elsewhere, with four points for a win, and a fifth point awarded if a side dismisses the opposition for less than 80% of its own score, or uses less than 80% of the available overs to reach its target. I would go a step further, and give a sixth point if the opponents made less than 50% of the score, or fewer than 50% of the overs were needed.

For example:nSide A makes 200 in their 50 overs. If they bowl side B out for less than 160, they take 5 points from the game; if side B fails to make 100, side A gets 6 points.nIf, on the other hand, side B knocks off the runs they need in less than 40 overs, they get 5 points; do it in less than 25, and they take 6.

Simple.

Had this system been in operation in the Topklasse in 2010, a fifth point would have been gained in 24 matches, and a sixth just once, when Hermes-DVS dismissed HCC for 72 after making 222 for seven. The final points tables would have been as follows:

Top four			Bottom four
Excelsior '20	51		Rood en Wit	35
VRA	49		VOC	31
Hermes-DVS	43		ACC	28
HCC	41		Quick Haag	21

In other words, the order would have been exactly the same as under the current system.

Does it follow from this that there's no point in change? Absolutely not. In the first place, bonus points would be a more transparent way of sorting out the rankings than the existing head-to-head and net run rate criteria, since the chance of two sides finishing on the same number of points at the end of the season would be significantly reduced. And they would also mean that teams were appropriately rewarded for convincing or overwhelming victories.

More important, the availability of the extra point(s) would have a positive effect on the way some matches were played, and make them more absorbing for players and spectators alike. To take a couple of examples: on 16 May this year, Rood en Wit made 253 for eight against Hermes-DVS, who were then dismissed for 203 in 47.4 overs. From the time Hermes coach Shanan Stewart was sixth out with the total on 162, the result was scarcely in doubt, and the finish was only a matter of time.

But suppose that bonus points had been on offer. Hermes would then have had a secondary target, which would have been 203 – 80% of 253 is 202.4. So when the eighth wicket fell at 190, 13 would still have been needed to deny Rood en Wit their fifth point, and every run would have been much more significant as the tailenders gradually worked their way to 203. Conversely, Rood en Wit skipper Jarrod Engelfield would have had to think differently as he sought those last two wickets, especially since at that stage of the season .

Hermes would have been involved in another thriller on 20 June, and this time it was the derby against Schiedam rivals Excelsior. Again batting first, Hermes made 240 for eight, and when Excelsior were 168 for eight it was obviously all over. With bonus points, though, they would have been looking at 193 as their secondary target, to ensure that Hermes only got four points for their win. In the event they were all out for 188, but the story of the final overs would have been different – and a good deal more exciting – if Excelsior had known that they could hold Hermes to four points by reaching 193.

Would such a system lead to more negative cricket? I don't believe so. Sides would still go all out for a win, but it would introduce another element into the situation in a certain proportion of matches, not least where the side batting second could collect an extra point by reaching their target more quickly. It is, at the very least, worth a try!

Just when you think that the ICC has hit rock bottom in your estimation, they somehow manage to find new depths. So it was yesterday, when an ICC media release announced the agenda for the Executive Board meeting which is taking place in Dubai on Tuesday and Wednesday this week.

It is, of course, an event which has been looming large in the consciousness of many cricket-lovers for the past month, ever since we caught wind of the Chief Executives' Committee's plans for the future of the international game. For it seems likely that decisions will be taken this week which will underline the cynical disregard with which the sport's leaders are prepared to treat its growth and development outside the borders of the ten Full member countries.

CricketEurope has been in the forefront of the campaign against the iniquitous proposal to cut the World Cup to ten participants, when others who claim to love and support the game have remained conspicuously and disgracefully silent. At the risk of being labelled obsessives, we have marshalled what I believe to be an unanswerable case against a proposal which could put an end to the ten years of investment and progress in the 95 member countries whose cricket development now appears to be in jeopardy.

It has to be said that we have not done so in any great mood of optimism: the grip of the BCCI and its allies on the ICC is too strong and uncompromising to inspire much hope that the Board's decisions this week will provide any reassurance for those who dream of cricket's one day becoming a truly global sport.

But I have to admit that Monday's media release surprised even me. Following the item about the CEC's recommendations, I read this:

Cricket development in China and USA
The ICC Board will hear reports from the Asian Cricket Council (ACC) on cricket development in China while New Zealand Cricket, which has a principle partnership agreement with the United States Cricket Association, will report on progress in America. ICC President Sharad Pawar believes both Members should be a priority of the ICC Board, who will now discuss what future initiatives they wish to pursue in the two countries and what format they take within the parameters of the next ICC Strategic Plan 2011-15, which is also on the agenda for discussion.

We all know about the ICC's bizarre preoccupation with cricket in China and the USA, driven as it is by the 'market'-centred thinking which threatens to distort irretrievably what passes for policy-making in Dubai. But that they should choose this moment to reaffirm their preference for those two countries at the expense of the other 93, just as they are about to deliver a huge blow to the efforts and ideals of those who are genuinely committed to the development of cricket, displays an utter cynicism which is little short of breathtaking.

It's little more than two years since the USCA was under formal suspension by the ICC for gross irregularities in its governance, and while there are signs that things are improving dramatically under new CEO Don Lockerbie, it is still much too early to say that they are out of the woods. And as for China, where cricket is barely past the conception stage, let alone in early infancy, the notion that they should be prioritised over, say, Afghanistan or Brazil, would be laughable if it were not so potentially damaging.

But above all, it's the sheer insensitivity of the juxtaposition which leaves one gasping. It shows that not only do those who run the BCCI and the ICC not care about anything except turning an ever-faster buck, but they have no understanding whatsoever of the contempt with which they are rightly regarded by many observers of the game, or the despair which their actions inspire. They are a dark stain on their much-vaunted Spirit of Cricket.

Things just seem to go on getting more and more depressing. Hard on the heels of the ICC's iniquitous decision to cut the World Cup to ten participants from 2015 comes news that Cricket Australia, reportedly one of the architects of that scheme, are now going to model their domestic Twenty20 competition on the IPL. And not content with that, they're actually going whoring after Indian money to help finance it.

Since I'm currently in Australia, I've had the ineffable pleasure of watching Cricket Australia CEO, James Sutherland, talking up the new approach, apparently quite happy with the fact that Indian investors have already bought shares in the new 'franchises' to the tune of some $60m.

When I wrote my nightmare vision of cricket's future a few weeks ago, I worried that it might be a bit over the top. Now it seems as if my big mistake was making the timescale so long: Sutherland and his cronies are apparently capable of wrecking cricket faster than I could ever have believed possible.

Cricket Australia are placing some emphasis on the fact that the franchises will still be 'owned' by the State organisations, and that the shareholding by outsiders will be limited to 33%. But when you combine that influence with the evident domination of cricket's own decision-making processes by money-men like Sutherland and their subservience to their media 'partners' (read 'masters'), it doesn't look good for the future of the game.

I had the chance on Sunday to experience what this Brave New World amounts to, at the T20 International between Australia and Sri Lanka. It means witches abseiling down from the floodlight towers to present the match ball to the referee (well, it was Hallowe'en), and Spiderman and Batman travelling on a high wire from one tower to another during the break between innings. It means an inane 'competition' during the same break which involved balls being fired high into the air from a cannon for four punters from the crowd to try to catch (they didn't actually catch a single one).

Of course it means ten-second bursts of over-loud music between every delivery because otherwise we might get bored – after all, all that was going on was a cricket match, and why would anybody be content merely to watch that? Despite the one-sidedness of the game, we did in fact have some very fine cricket to watch. Mainly from the Sri Lankans, although Brad Haddin and Steve Smith contributed an excellent stand of 66 off 44 balls after Australia had been reduced to 43 for five.

But the stars of the night were Suraj Randiv and Tissara Perera with the ball, and Mahela Jayawardene, Tillakaratne Dilshan, Kumar Sangakkara and, at the end, Tissara with the bat. The skills they and their fellow-players exhibited were those which would stand out in any form of cricket – accurate, persistent bowling, excellent fielding and catching and some magnificent stroke-play – and they derive from years of experience of the longer form of the game.

That's one of the fundamental errors made by the more extreme advocates of the T20ist approach to cricket. Nobody will ever become a decent cricketer by concentrating on Twenty20, which is why the ICC's message to its 95 Associate and Affiliate members that that's all they're good for is such a screaming, diabolical insult. The bowling of Dilhara Fernando and Peter Siddle – both of whom bowled better than their figures suggested – and the range of orthodox shots displayed by Haddin, Jayawardene, Dilshan and Sangakkara were developed over days and months and years in the longer formats.

And why would anyone choose to watch less of such skills, rather than more? One of the sad things about Sunday's match, if you have any interest in cricket at all, was that it was all over so soon. I could have gone on watching Sangakkara till past midnight.

But then, that's another of the basic flaws in Sutherland's way of thinking. 'The Twenty20 format is a fan favourite', he said in his note in the match programme. Yet the WACA was complaining that only 9000 tickets had been sold, and the 20,000-capacity ground was well short of full for the first big match of the season.

Nor could many of those who were there legitimately be called fans, or certainly not cricket fans. A bunch of young guys near where I was sitting demonstrated their understanding and appreciation of the game by yelling ''Ave a go, yer piece of shit!' from the second over, and by about the fifth they had effectively stopped following the match at all. By the end, quite a few of the 'fans' were concentrating on trying to persuade deep third man to sign an inflatable plastic penis, or pelting each other with empty plastic cups. If that's the crowd that Sutherland's trying to attract, he should go back to running an Australian Rules football club, whence he unfortunately came.

No wonder Cricket Australia market their domestic T20 competition by calling it 'the Big Bash'. That tells you all you need to, but really don't want to, know.

At a proper cricket match on Saturday, a first-grade game between South Perth and Willetton, I was talking with some real cricket fans, admittedly mostly of the older generation, who had no intention of attending. 'I certainly won't be there tomorrow,' said one former State player, one of the greats of a much more dignified age. But I bet he'll be there on Friday, when England kick off their Ashes tour with a three-day match against WA. And so will I!

There's nothing quite like the start of an Ashes tour in Australia. All that possibility stretching out like a long, straight Australian country road, towards Boxing Day at the MCG and beyond, even if the demands of the modern itinerary have converted the traditional Australia Day Test in Adelaide into a mere ODI. But at least this summer's tour is starting where it should, at the WACA in Perth.

In the good old days, visiting sides arrived by ship at Fremantle, getting things under way in a leisurely fashion with a match against a WA Country XI at Bunbury, Kalgoorlie or Northam, followed by a four-day match against the State side and another against a 'Combined XI' – WA reinforced by three players from the Eastern States. That was, of course, well before Perth was a Test venue, and before it became normal for Western Australians to make up a significant chunk of the national side.

Even after Perth Airport became the port of entry rather than Fremantle, tours tended to keep to the same pattern. As recently as 2002-03, England opened up with a one-day match against an ACB President's XI at Lilac Hill in the Swan Valley, and then played, a little oddly, two- and three-day games against WA. It was only four years ago that hostilities opened in Canberra, England reaching Perth in time to prepare for the Third Test, by which time they were two down in the series.

The last time I watched England play WA at the WACA they weren't even England: it was 1965-66, and outside the Test matches the tourists played as MCC. Having stretched their legs with a one-day canter at Moora, a Wheatbelt town 177 km. north of Perth, they won a thriller in the opening first-class match of the tour, beating WA by just 9 runs after Mike Smith set them 301 to make on the final day.

Bob Barber and Jim Parks both made centuries as the MCC ran up 447 for five in their first innings, and then WA opener Peter Kelly made a solid 119 as the home side battled their way to 303 for nine. A second declaration set up the chance for a result, but it looked at one stage as if Smith might have miscalculated, as Kelly and Murray Vernon added 171 for the fourth wicket and WA reached 224 for three. Kelly went on to carry his bat and become the second Western Australian to record a century in each innings, but there was a dramatic collapse, the last four wickets falling for five runs and David Larter finishing off the home challenge with ten still needed.

That was a great finish, but this time the tour had a dramatic start, as Stuart Broad removed Liam Davis and Michael Swart with consecutive deliveries before there was a run on the board. It was slow progress after that, Wes Robinson and Marcus North – the latter labouring under the weight of having just been branded 'Australia's next Test captain' – battled to rebuild the innings. With Broad and James Anderson producing impressive opening spells the total had reached 21 after an hour, most of the runs coming from Steven Finn, who had some difficulty finding a consistent length. Five minutes from the interval, North became Broad's third victim, and the Warriors went to lunch on a precarious 45 for three.

A much more productive afternoon session, however, saw 156 added for the loss of Robinson's wicket, caught and bowled driving a little tentatively at Paul Collingwood when he had made 62. Adam Voges had moved on to 54 not out, playing some splendid strokes against Graham Swann in particular, and Luke Pomersbach was on 13.

The approach to the WACA through Queens Gardens is surely among the most serene and beautiful ways to reach a major cricket ground: laid out in 1899 on the site of Perth's former claypits and brickworks, the park features manicured lawns, lilypad-adorned ponds, and a replica of the Peter Pan statue from London's Kensington Gardens, and it's always peaceful, even midweek when it's surrounded by the hum of traffic.

There was something peaceful, too, about the WACA itself this Saturday morning, as the second day's play in England's first tour match got under way. If yesterday's crowd was a half-reasonable 2122, today's numbered tens as Ryan Duffield opened up to Andrew Strauss.

Duffield and Steve Magoffin began with a relatively modest three slips and a gully, even for nightwatchman James Anderson, contrasting with the four slips and two gullies Magoffin deployed in his final over on Friday. It was enough to account for Strauss, who nicked Magoffin to keeper Luke Ronchi in the second over of the morning.

It was the WACA which was the true birthplace of the umbrella field, the brainchild of Keith Carmody, the WA captain-coach in their inaugural Sheffield Shield season, 1947-48. Carmody, a New South Welshman in origin, had begun thinking about more extensive attacking fields as early as 1945, when, recently released from a POW camp in Germany, he played under Lindsay Hassett's captaincy in the Australian Services team which took on England in an unofficial 'Test' series.

But it was as captain of WA, newly admitted to the Shield competition, that Carmody made use of an eight-man cordon from gully to leg gully. It was an effective tactic for opening bowlers like Charlie Puckett and Ken Cumming: Puckett took 24 wickets in the four matches WA played in winning the Shield at their first attempt, and Cumming 13. It was taken up by NSW captain Keith Miller, and Hassett used it regularly during the Australians' tour of England in 1953.

Magoffin's seven-man arc of keeper, four slips and two gullies on Friday evening came close to the Carmody field, although it would be very unusual these days to see the addition of a leg gully. And it is the sort of field we're unlikely to see anywhere except in multi-day cricket.

And that, of course, is part of the point: first-class cricket offers a range of tactical situations and subplots which are unknown in the one-day game, let alone Twenty20. After a day and a half here, a mere 385 runs have been scored for 15 wickets, at an average of 41 per hour or just under 2.9 per over. Yet the cricket has never been less than absorbing, with fine seam bowling from England's Stuart Broad and James Anderson and WA's Magoffin – until he left the field with another knee injury – and Michael Hogan, some subtly-varied left-arm spin from Michael Beer, and excellent strokeplay from Adam Voges yesterday and Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen.

It's cricket for the connoisseur, a real battle between bat and ball of the kind that cricket's administrators seem determined to restrict as much as they can, and certainly deny to everyone except those fortunates who happen to live in a Test-playing country. As we approach tea on Day 2, Ian Bell and Stuart Broad are fighting a rearguard action, and they've got their side to within 90 of WA's first-innings total.

The fields are more defensive now, but Duffield, in his twelfth over of the day, is still bowling with two slips and two gullies, while Beer has three men gathered round the bat for Broad. Learning how to play this stuff should be part of any young cricketer's apprenticeship!

91.3 SportFM is a Perth community radio station which, now that the ABC has largely moved out of the business of ball-by-ball commentary on WA's first-class and one-day cricket, has filled the gap admirably. Kept afloat by a small group of faithful sponsors, SportFM gives cricket-lovers across the State – and online through their partners PerthNow – the sort of service once provided by the ABC.

On Sunday afternoon, as England began what would prove to be their successful run-chase to win the opening first-class match of an Ashes tour for the first time in 45 years – that 1965 victory I wrote about on Friday was, in fact, the last time they did it – I spent an hour or so as their guest on air, chatting about Associates' and Affiliates' cricket with Colin Metson, Corbin Middlemas and their colleagues.

The fact that a succession of well-known Western Australian cricketers, from Tim Zoehrer and Wayne Andrews to Murray Goodwin, Sean Cary and Michael Dighton, have played in the Netherlands undoubtedly fuelled their interest, and the story of Afghanistan's rise is guaranteed to quicken the pulse of anyone who loves the game.

But the most encouraging aspect of the conversation was the immediate and unequivocal response of former Australian Test spinner Brad Hogg, now developing a career as a commentator and analyst, to the ICC's decision to cut the World Cup to ten participants from 2015.

Hogg, who has fond memories of playing in Amstelveen during the Videocon Cup in 2004, was much more forthcoming on the subject than many 'experts' in the Full member countries. Of course the leading Associates needed the chance to play meaningful cricket on the world stage, he said, and it didn't matter a jot if some of those games were one-sided. The achievements of Ireland in 2007 added drama to that tournament, and players in the non-Test countries should continue to have the opportunity to aspire to and work towards playing at the highest level.

He and his fellow-commentators could see, as many in the Full member countries cannot, that confining the Associates' and Affiliates' international opportunities to Twenty20 cricket would distort coaching and limit players' development, ensuring that no other country would ever undertake the journey made by Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe and Bangladesh in the past. And he was in no doubt whatsoever that that would be bad for cricket in the long run.

We need more Brad Hoggs to speak out in the coming months if the ICC's disastrous decision, driven by the greed of Cricket Australia and their allies and their subservience to their media 'partners', is to be reversed. If it is true, as rumour now suggests, that the vote in the Executive Board was more split than we have been led to believe, then that decision should not be regarded as written in stone.

It's already clear that the Australians have over-reached themselves with their bizarre proposal to introduce their 45-over, two-innings variant of the one-day game at the 2015 World Cup, even ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat jumping on the idea with both feet. There may be an unholy alliance of the BCCI and Cricket Australia over a ten-team World Cup, but the Indians are too committed to the 50-over game to allow any tinkering with the playing format from the 2015 hosts.

There was some encouraging evidence, too, that Cricket Australia's overall strategy is fundamentally wrong-headed from the results of a poll published in Sunday's papers here. Asked which form of the game they preferred to watch, only 14.8% of respondents said Twenty20. 16.3% preferred one-dayers, while a massive 68.8% opted for Test cricket.

One has to admit that the timing of this poll, on the eve of a much-anticipated Ashes series, probably influenced the result, and the outcome might have been different if the question had related to domestic rather than international cricket. Even so, it suggests that CA chief executive James Sutherland seriously underestimates Australia's cricket public, the vast majority of whom still appreciate the virtues of real cricket.

A properly joined-up approach to the development of the game would have a place for the instant attraction of Twenty20, but it would also seek to make the most of the excitement which can be generated when the so-called 'minnows' raise their game and pull off a shock result, and it would continue to provide, and indeed increase, the funding which can enable them to do so more often. And it would continue to hold out the prospect, however distant, of a place at cricket's top table for any country which succeeds in developing, internationally and domestically, to the required level.

Cricket must not be the only global sport which operates a Closed Shop!

Nothing should be allowed to detract from the achievement of Afghanistan's dedicated, skilful cricketers, from their almost unbelievably rapid rise to prominence in the second level of world cricket, or from their tremendous victory over Scotland in this week's Intercontinental Cup final.

Unfortunately, however, they have a tendency to detract from it themselves, with on-field behaviour which goes far beyond the limits of acceptable competitiveness, into realms which look an awful lot like systematic cheating.

Unfortunately, too, they have been encouraged in their misconduct by weak umpiring, over and over again from the time they first set foot on the global stage at the World Cricket League Division 5 tournament in Jersey in 2008.

At least they no longer jeer at opposing fieldsmen as they set themselves to take a lofted catch. But their outrageous appealing throughout Scotland's second innings in Dubai, which earned an official caution for leg-spinner Samiullah Shenwari which might, on the face of it, have been handed out to more than one of his team-mates as well, took the gloss off what was otherwise a splendid display of fighting cricket.

And it's not as if it was an isolated occurrence. Back in February, during a World Twenty20 qualifier in the same Dubai stadium, wicketkeeper Mohammad Shahzad not only claimed a catch which he must have known he'd put down, but persisted with the appeal after it had been turned down. Shortly afterwards, there was an equally disgraceful attempt to persuade the umpires that a bump ball from Dutch skipper Peter Borren had come off his boot. Yet no action was taken by the match officials on either occasion.

Shahzad was disciplined during the World Cricket League Division 1 tournament in the Netherlands in the summer, for gesturing to the umpire when his opponents appealed for a catch at the wicket. But far too often in the past, it has seemed as if there was one rule for the Afghans and another for everyone else.

Even during this week's final, it was difficult to avoid the impression that the umpires were quicker to intervene when the Scots got out of line than they had been when Afghanistan were in the field. There have been rumours that umpires were actually told in the past to go easy with the Afghans, on the grounds that they were newcomers who were still learning the ropes. If there's any truth in that at all it would, of course, be utterly scandalous.

Let's hope there's no truth in those suspicions. But whatever the case, behaviour like that of the Afghan side on Friday evening and Saturday morning has been indulged by an ICC which has seemed at times to be so obsessed with the glamour of 'the Afghanistan story' that it has been willing to turn a blind eye to the less palatable side of their cricket.

No-one has greater admiration for the positive side of Nawrooz Mangal's team than I have. I admit to having started out as a sceptic, and they have time and time again proved my caution wrong with magnificent efforts on the field. In Hamid Hassan they have a fast bowler of world class; Mohammad Nabi is a fine allrounder; Noor Ali Zadran is a very good opening batsman; Nawrooz himself is probably the most technically correct player in the side and a very canny captain.

It is, however, a great shame that, in their enthusiasm and their fierce competitiveness, they seem at times to have no respect for the Spirit of the Game, and that cricket's authorities, supposedly the custodians of that Spirit, have done so little to reinforce it.

One consequence of the ICC's decision to base the final two places in the next Intercontinental Cup competition on the World Cricket League Division 2 tournament in Dubai in April is that the participants will not be known until the eve of the new Northern Hemisphere season.

And for four of the six countries who are already included, that threatens to be a planning nightmare.

Having observed the ICC High Performance Manager, Richard Done, in the past as he battled to fit together the jigsaw that is the Associates' fixture list, I hesitate to imagine what it will be like if he has to do so with two of the pieces of unknown size and shape.

There have been grumbles at times about the late finalisation of the fixtures, and the delay in firming up the 2011-12 competition seems likely to produce more headaches for hard-pressed administrators in some at least of the Northern Hemisphere countries. They have to fit their international fixtures into a busy domestic programme, and in the case of Scotland and the Netherlands, have to juggle their twelve Clydesdale Bank 40 League matches as well.

Dutch clubs, at least, are already unhappy about the way, as they see it, domestic cricket is subordinated to the needs of the national side, and a situation in which the Intercontinental Cup games and related ODIs were still unknown as late as April would simply be unacceptable. And rightly so.

Yet it's hard to see how that could be avoided. The contenders in Dubai will include Bermuda, and possibly one or both of Denmark and Italy, who could qualify for the Division 2 tournament by finishing in the top two of the Division 3 tournament in Hong Kong and Guangzhou next month. So it's possible – though perhaps unlikely – that one or even both of the remaining teams in the Intercontinental Cup could be from countries whose cricket is played between May and September.

Just think for a moment what that would do to the fixture list. In the normal course of events, Canada, Ireland, the Netherlands and Scotland would play two or three matches at home in 2011, away in the winter of 2011-12, and at home in 2012. The Dutch, for example, are due to entertain Ireland and Kenya in the next cycle, and to visit Sharjah (Afghanistan's home ground), Canada and Scotland, while Scotland will be at home to Kenya and the Netherlands and away to Afghanistan, Canada and Ireland.

But the shape of their programmes would vary enormously, depending on whether their other opponents were, say, Bermuda and Italy, or Namibia and Papua New Guinea. And the first case, or even a partial version of it, would have a potentially disruptive effect on any planning for next summer.

No doubt Richard Done is already acutely aware of these problems, and will already be grappling with possible solutions. There might be just sufficient scope for him to build a 2011 schedule for Europe and North America which would hold good regardless of the outcome in Dubai in April, especially since the form book suggests that surely at least one of Namibia and the UAE will make it through.

Let's hope so, for the existing High Performance countries cannot afford to wait.