Dutch Board to face its critics on 1 December

The special general meeting of the KNCB demanded by ten member clubs will be held on 1 December.

In reply to questions from Emerging Cricket, KNCB secretary Robert Vermeulen indicated that the notice calling the meeting had been issued on 3 November, as required by the constitution. The one item on the agenda will be the functioning of the Board.

Unusually, however, there is as yet no reference to the meeting on the KNCB website, where such notices are generally placed.

The Board appears, moreover, to have ignored the advice of the clubs to hold, as quickly as possible, an independent inquiry into the relationships within the Board, the results of which might, in the clubs’ view, have formed a basis for the discussion at the general meeting.

Asked about that advice, Mr Vermeulen replied that such an inquiry ‘could be a topic for debate at the meeting, but no investigation is (yet) taking place’.

The background to the clubs’ unprecedented move was the Board’s decision to terminate the contract of CEO Milena van Not, who has been in office for just ten months.

When club representatives met Board members in a virtual meeting on 1 November the discussion caused such dissatisfaction that they proceeded immediately to call for the special general meeting, and for a prior investigation into the current state of the Board.

The Board may take the view that there is no need for such an inquiry, but another possible explanation of their declining to act on the clubs’ advice is that they are stalling for time. If so, it is unlikely to win them new friends among the clubs.

The meeting will take place in the evening following the final ODI in the Super League series between the Netherlands and South Africa in Centurion.

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