At last the 2028 show

A dozen or so years ago, I had an argument with Richard Cox, then CEO of the KNCB (Dutch cricket’s governing body), about the role of the clubs in the KNCB’s policy-making.

Under the KNCB constitution, the clubs have the final say, through general meetings, on all matters of policy and governance, up to and including election and possible dismissal of the Board, but Cox’s argument was that since they only contributed 3% of the Bond’s income they weren’t really entitled to such power.

 

I disagreed, but I could see what he meant, especially since some of the clubs’ most vocal representatives were constantly complaining about the KNCB’s excessive dependence on ICC funding, or what they called the ‘hostage-taking of the dollars’.

Now, at last, it looks as if the general meeting of the KNCB on 13 December is likely to be confronted with a mirror-image of that argument, with proposals for a swingeing increase in ‘player contributions’ – paid through the clubs’ KNCB subscriptions – over the next three years.

The Board has been gazing into its crystal ball, and it’s fair to say that it doesn’t like what it sees.

The ‘Finance pre-read’ circulated in advance of the general meeting notes that the ICC has warned its members to expect a 30% revenue decrease when the new contract cycle starts in 2028, and with an expected deficit of about €190k in 2025, continuing with the status quo does not look like an option.

It is, the Board points out, a structural problem: the KNCB has achieved an operating profit only three times in the past decade, and only once since 2021.

Moan as much as we like about the disgraceful inequities of the ICC’s resource allocation model, and God knows we do, the fact remains that domestic cricket in the Netherlands, which includes the infrastructure required to keep it running, has been substantially subsidised by those frequently-condemned ICC dollars.

The new document stresses, persistently and laudably, the KNCB management’s commitment to ensuring that ‘domestic cricket remains well-funded and vibrant’, accepting the need to ‘maintain and strengthen’ domestic competitions, club support and services, and youth and women’s development programmes, coaching and umpire development, and its efforts to grow the game nationwide.

But the bottom line is that this cannot be done on the resources currently available.

The Dutch Olympic Committee (NOC*NSF), the Board points out, recommends a minimum contribution of €30 from each player to their national body, while the current level charged by the KNCB is just €7.50.

Hardly surprising then that domestic cricket in the Netherlands doesn’t pay for itself: the initial budget calculation for 2026, based on the absolute minima required for the KNCB to perform its most basic functions, projects a €35k loss on the domestic game.

Offering a range of four possible scenarios for 2026, then, the Board proposes to increase the player contribution for next year to €20, moving to €30 in 2027 and €40 in 2028.

This would enable the central organisation to commit €50k in 2026 to improved support for domestic cricket: that would, the document suggests, include better competitions, improved club services and communication, greater grassroots development (more regional development officers?), expanded support for youth and women’s cricket, and ‘more consistent training and development pathways for umpires, scorers and coaches’.

No doubt the Board will be anticipating pretty strong pushback from club representatives at the general meeting, who seldom have a good word to say about the central organisation and who are all too conscious of the financial problems they face in their own clubs.

But can they really go on justifying a contribution of just 3% to the KNCB’s overall costs, while expecting a first-class service from an organisation which is kept afloat by others?

Even the proposed increase to €20 a head would only increase the clubs’ share of KNCB revenue to 7.4%, perhaps rising to 12-15% over the following two years,

‘You get what you pay for’, the old cynical adage goes, and if the KNCB management’s performance has left something to be desired, perhaps that’s a point club boards might like to reflect on.

Any increase in the clubs’ subscriptions to the KNCB would, no doubt, be handed on to the individual members in the form of raised club subscriptions, but here we might note that the €7.50 paid to the Bond is a small proportion of most clubs’ charge to members, and even another €12.50 shouldn’t make the difference between playing and not playing.

What, we might ask, is a reasonable amount to have to play a sport you love? And what is a fair share for the national governing body to claim?

Subscriptions to sports clubs in the Netherlands vary enormously, and so do the affiliation fees charged by the national bodies.

According to the latest figures from the Mulier Instituut, which checks these things, the average subscription charged by a Dutch hockey club in 2024/25 was €350, while the average affiliation fee charged by governing bodies was €36.82 for seniors, €23.49 for juniors,and €19,70 for the youngest youth; the highest charged by anybody was €44.66 by the Basketball Federation.

All of which makes €20 seem like a pretty good deal.

You have to take into account, of course, the relative brevity of the Dutch cricket season, four and a half months rather than the eight, or nine, or ten claimed by the footballers and hockey players, but against that, a better-funded KNCB could do much more to support indoor competitions over the winter, especially for juniors and women.

There are some reasonable questions which might be asked about the Pre-read document, which doesn’t extend its projections beyond 2026 and which has not yet really broken its costings down to give a complete picture of how it reaches its implied minimal cost of €93.5k. for domestic cricket.

But its reveals much more sophisticated thinking about the finances of Dutch cricket than any previous Board has achieved (including the ones I was on), and it certainly heads in the right direction.

The clubs might be forgiven for a certain hesitancy about agreeing outright to a €40 affiliation fee in 2028, and might reasonably wait to see what they’re getting for their €20 in 2026, but it would be a recipe for disaster if they simply refuse to look at the financial realities which are staring them in the face.

The author was Vice-chairman of the KNCB from 2012 to 2015, and a Board member in 2015-16.

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