One of the most attractive features of next Saturday’s Hoofdklasse final will be the way in which it brings into opposition two of the most influential figures in Dutch cricket over the past fifteen years: Voorburg’s Tim de Leede and VRA’s Darrin Murray.

De Leede (right), who retired from international cricket after the World Cup as The Netherlands’ most-capped player, has also had a distinguished domestic career, and has played a key role in his club’s remarkable journey to the final.

Hovering near the bottom of the table six weeks into the season, Voorburg have put together a sequence of results which took them into third place, and which last weekend saw them first tie with VOC Rotterdam, then beat them decisively in the replay.

And a crucial factor in that revival has been the efforts of De Leede, who took on a new lease of life once he handed over the captaincy to John Sist in mid-June. After a modest season by his standards in 2006, he had scored just 70 runs at an average of 17.50 and taken 11 wickets at 19.82. But over the rest of the campaign he has added a further 430 with the bat at 39.09, adding another 18 wickets to his tally at an average cost of 16.55.

This brings his career record as a batsman to 11,323 runs – fourth in the all-time list after Emmerson Trotman, Peter Cantrell and Nolan Clarke, and thus the most prolific Dutch-born player of all – at an average of 40.30. He has also taken a total of 446 wickets at 19.26.

Captain of the side for many seasons, De Leede led Voorburg to their first – and so far, only – national title in 2002. Now 39, he has been the subject of rumours that this may be his last season in the Hoofdklasse, although the news that he had been appointed VOC’s new general manager was accompanied by assurances that he would continue to play for his old club.

Whatever the future may hold for him, there will be many neutral observers who will see a Voorburg win on Saturday as a fitting end to what has been a momentous season for the ex-international.

Somebody who will have other ideas about that with certainly be VRA's New Zealand-born captain Darrin Murray, just four months older than De Leede.

Murray (left), who first came to The Netherlands as VRA’s coach in 1993, has an equally impressive record as a batsman: he has played almost exactly half as many Hoofdklasse matches as the Voorburg allrounder, and has made 6618 runs at an average of 53.37. He needs just 60 more runs to overtake Wim Glerum as VRA’s leading run-scorer, and every supporter of the Amsterdam club will be hoping that he gets them on Saturday.

But Murray’s contribution to the side goes far beyond his contribution with the bat. 

In his four years as coach between 1993 and 1996, he built up the nucleus of the team that would go on to take six national titles in nine years, and his captaincy then and in the past two seasons, since his return from New Zealand with his family to settle in Amstelveen, has done much to make them the most successful side of the decade.

The experience which he accumulated in eight seasons of first-class cricket for Canterbury, culminating in eight Tests and one ODI for New Zealand, is incomparable, and it may turn out to be significant that he played in five finals in that time, skippering his side in two of them.

Murray was back in Christchurch when VRA began their sequence of wins, and the 2005 title was the first in which he played an active part – fittingly, he hit the winning boundary when the side secured the championship at Hermes.

Last year, having taken over the captaincy from Joost Leemhuis, he led them to their second successive title. This Saturday, the challenge is to make it three in a row, for the first time in the club’s history.

De Leede and Murray are both fierce competitors who will relish the heightened atmosphere of a championship final. They will both be giving 100 per cent for their teams on Saturday, because it’s the only way they know how to play – and any ambitious young Dutch cricketers, on the field or watching, would go far to find better role-models.