Dutch cricket goes in search of a new leader

A visionary leader with experience in change management, someone with strong financial acumen and strong interpersonal and communication skills, experience in managing complex stakeholder environments, ideally a speaker of Dutch and English with a background in cricket?

If so, you shouldn’t be reading this; you should be working on your application for the position of CEO of the Dutch governing body (KNCB), advertised last week with applications closing on 1 November.

It has to be acknowledged that, historically speaking, the chief executive position of the KNCB has not been an easy gig.

The successful candidate this time will be the sixth CEO in eight years – two of them, admittedly, interim appointments – and although the circumstances of each departure have been different, there is a crying need for some stability in the role.

To paraphase Anna Karenina, every unhappy CEO is unhappy in their own way; but there are clear patterns of poor governance which still need to be broken.

To be fair, there are some grounds for optimism.

Lucas Hendrikse, the current interim incumbent who will step down early next year, has had a real impact on the organisation of the office, and the innovation of last week’s ‘Town Hall’, giving club representatives and others an opportunity to speak their minds outside the formality and political tension of a general meeting, certainly served to clear the air.

And Guido Landheer’s new-look Board, with Jacques van Zuydam (treasurer), former international Sybrand Engelbrecht (high performance) and Rashid Shah (marketing and communication) all subject to formal election in December, has the makings of becoming the most effective in living memory.

On the field, too, some things are looking up: after years of decline, seven new clubs have joined the KNCB in the past couple of years, including two in the far north and south of the country (Phoenix Groningen and CC Maastricht respectively).

Women’s and girls’ cricket remains a cause for concern, but the establishment of a taskforce to address the many problems of recruitment and retention reflects the high priority the Board attaches to that side of the game.

Money, of course, is the root of many of the KNCB’s ills: the disgracefully distorted funding distribution model of the ICC keeps all the Associates strapped for cash, and despite the successes of the men’s team in major tournaments, cricket’s low public profile in the Netherlands makes finding sponsors a difficult task.

So whoever takes on the CEO role will have plenty of work to do, but that also means plenty of opportunities to consolidate the Dutch position among the leading Associates.

There has been a tendency in the past decade to prefer a local candidate, but this time the Board has opted to throw the net much wider.

Asked about the preference for a Dutch speaker, chairman Landheer replied at the weekend that the KNCB is ‘an international organisation operating in a multicultural environment’.

‘While Dutch is our home language,’ he added, ‘cricket in the Netherlands thrives on diversity.

‘We therefore welcome applications from both Dutch and non-Dutch speakers – what matters most is leadership, vision, and the ability to connect with our community and stakeholders.’

And that is certainly how the advertisement reads: ambitious, with a clear sense of what the KNCB needs to take it forward.

The successful candidate will need to be brave as well as skilful, tactful as well as hard-headed, nimble as well as determined – but for someone with those qualities, there will be few better opportunities to contribute effectively to the game.

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