Dutch coach Peter Cantrell seems to have covered most of the bases with his initial selection of a 23-strong squad to prepare for the 2007 World Cup: there's the promised balance of experience and youth, and it's hard to think of players whose omission comes as a surprise.

The only faces missing from the ICC Trophy squad are those of Feiko Kloppenburg and Jacob-Jan Esmeijer, both of whom have retired from international cricket. What is striking, however, is that only five members of this year's under-23 side have made the cut, although given the way that team performed it's perhaps not so surprising.

It's now, of course, that the hard part begins. Over the next year or eighteen months Cantrell will have to build a stable combination, a tightly-knit group of fifteen players who will be ready to perform at the furthest limits of their ability in the Caribbean.

Like the other World Cup qualifiers, the Dutch have a lot to prove, and they need to do so on several fronts. For a start, it's important not to be too catastrophically outclassed by the likes of Sri Lanka, or in the tournament itself by Australia and South Africa.

Some statistics illustrate the nature of the problem. Over the past eighteen months there have been 35 ODIs between the top eight Test countries and one or other of the ‘minnows': Zimbabwe, Bangladesh and Kenya.

Batting first in 17 of those games, the Big Eight have averaged a total of 284, scoring at 5.7 an over; the only side to be bowled out was New Zealand against Bangladesh in Chittagong in 2004, a match the Kiwis nevertheless won quite comfortably.

The minnows, on the other hand, have managed to average only 176 in 18 games where they batted first, scored at 3.95 an over; in ten of those matches the underdogs were bowled out within the allotted overs.

That gives some idea of what the qualifiers are up against. In order to reach the level of the weaker Test nations, they need to find bowlers who can contain the best batsmen in the world to around 5.5 an over, and batsmen who can score at at least 4 an over against the toughest bowling the Big Eight can present them with.

But there are more realistic, and probably more significant targets. The Netherlands enters this campaign as very definitely the third team in Europe: although they've beaten Scotland in the last two European Championships they lost to them comprehensively in the ICC Trophy, and they haven't beaten Ireland since 2000. They've also had the worst of all four Intercontinental Cup matches they've played so far.

So Cantrell's first task has to be to create a team that can hold its own against its major European rivals, and against the other non-Test countries.

That's why the games in Kenya next March will provide such a key benchmark: although they have been going through difficult times both on and off the field recently, the Kenyans have a good deal more experience in both the shorter and longer forms of the game, and in Steve Tikolo they have one of the few players of genuine Test quality outside the Test arena.

The Kenyan side will have entertained Sri Lanka A and taken part in the Duleep Trophy in India before the Dutch arrive, so they'll be ready and waiting, with something to prove after losing their cherished full ODI status. Good performances here by The Netherlands, however, would lay the foundations for what needs to be achieved in the following twelve months

In the second half of this article we'll look at the players in Cantrell's squad, and try to assess the issues facing him and the challenges facing the players.