A slightly-edited version of the article below was published last week in the KNCB weekly Cricket. The author, John Wories, is an lid van verdienste (member through service) of the KNCB, a former manager of the national side, and immediate past chairman of Hoofdklasse club VRA Amsterdam.

His criticisms of the current administration (written, obviously, before the announcement of the Bond's new deal with sponsors Optiver) may not all receive universal acceptance, but they represent a clear warning signal that there is growing dissatisfaction with many aspects of the KNCB's performance.

All’s not well in Nieuwegein

Everything sounded so promising. The brand-new Chairman of the KNCB promised us that his board would turn the Bond’s apparatus into a service institution. The wizard in Nieuwegein conjured up for us a world in which the Bond existed for us, and not the other way round.

To be sure, a trained volunteer (who always answered the phone) and one employee would need to be removed. And certainly there would need to be a new director appointed in order to attract sponsorship income, and a paid bookkeeper for nine hours a week.

And the organisation of the youth competitions would have to be subcontracted.

A lot of money altogether, but then everything would improve.

It's now six months later. The KNCB office is difficult to contact throughout the week, and on Fridays it's almost impossible.

I have not yet been able to find in the eagerly-read column in Cricket entitled 'News from Nieuwegein' that any new sponsorship money has been attracted. I have certainly read that we will have a play-off competition. In other sports, play-offs are usually introduced for commercial reasons: more sponsorship money, more time on television, more money at the gate. That can’t be the motive in our case. We still have, apart from Nachenius, no sponsors, we have no TV time, and we have no paying customers.

But let's not complain: it certainly is new!

In every other sport where play-offs take place, the highest-placed team decides where the final will be played. This is the only advantage that you get after finishing on top. But not with the KNCB.

Results on the field don't count; the board decides. Take just one more step, and the board chooses the national champions. That would save the club concerned from playing a lot of games. We're back in the fifties and sixties, when the board, sitting at the baize-covered table, decided who would be relegated. The board has decreed that the final will be played on the ACC ground.

Just to be clear: ACC has fine fields, a pleasant pavilion and a committee which inspires confidence. But for the past ten years the KNCB board has begged the clubs to install grass wickets, to build a sports hall and if at all possible, according to the norms for high performance, a swimming pool as well. And what do we then do for the most important match, which will decide the championship? We play it on an artificial pitch.

In all other sports, play-offs are always decided on the best of three matches. With the KNCB, everything is decided by one match, which might be seriously influenced by the sisters Duckworth and Lewis.

For years I have been listening to the KNCB’s oracle: 'We must spend on top-level cricket, because that will ultimately bring in money.' In the meantime, the Bond has become broke, and we have fewer players, fewer grounds, and fewer spectators.

To the top four Hoofdklasse clubs, from whom the Dutch champions will come, I now say: decide among yourselves how and where the final will be played. You don’t need Nieuwegein for that. And perhaps they will then decide, as in the past, that the fifth-placed team are the champions.

Max de Bruin, chairman of ACC, tells me that his club 'has met the organisational and other requirements' that the KNCB laid down. In other words, ACC are paying part of the bill. Other clubs were not invited by the board to submit offers to stage this match.

Last week we had more pleasant news from Nieuwegein.

The current top-placed side, VRA, played last Sunday against the number 2, VOC. VRA had four players in the Dutch side, VOC none.

The KNCB is always there in a flash if there's any question of tampering with the competition. As if this wasn’t tampering with the competition!

Suppose this were to happen with one of the Big Three Dutch football teams, or with a top side in the hockey competition, such as Bloemendaal. The board members wouldn’t stay long in office. The administrators in those sports are too smart for that. They know that the strength of their organisation lies with the clubs. It's the clubs that invest in their players, club houses and fields. In players who will shortly play in the Dutch side. With that knowledge at the back of their minds they give priority to a good structure and a well-ordered management of the competition.

The board says that the clubs themselves chose to continue playing the Hoofdklasse when the Dutch side is away. That was indeed agreed during the consultation with Hoofdklasse and Eerste Klasse clubs, but with the emphatic rider that there must be a numbers limit. What would happen if the national coach were to choose six or more players from one club?

I would guess that VOC weren't really too happy with their victory over the VRA Second Eleven. Is the next step that the clubs will have to refuse to make their players available for the Dutch side? My advice to the clubs is: meet next autumn without the KNCB board and agree down to matters of detail how you want the competition to run, and present the result to the board as an ultimatum.

There's so much else that isn't right. The dates for replayed matches in the Twenty20 competition weren't set in advance. The Code of Conduct isn’t embedded in the Competition Rules, which has caused the Discipline Committee problems; the KNCB website is updated about as often as my car's certificate of fitness; nett run rate still hasn't been introduced in place of runs per wicket; and compensation to the clubs for the use of their turf pitches for matches of the Dutch team are set so low that they don’t even play for the grass seed.

The KNCB's promise to become a service institution isn’t achieved through better contact between its committees. Wake up, cricket clubs! Start a campaign of civil disobedience! Put all the conditions for the Hoofdklasse and the Twenty20 competition firmly on paper, among yourselves in the first instance. Don't leave it to the club administrators in future to point out everything that's going wrong with the KNCB.

Power and authority rest with the clubs, and it's up to you to use it.

And perhaps then all will again be well in Nieuwegein.