Friday March 19, 2010

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.’

Monday March 15, 2010

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.