The KNCB is to mark the beginning of its 125th anniversary celebrations with an inaugural National Cricket Congress at the Olympic Stadium in Amsterdam on Saturday 12 April.

The event, which will incorporate the regular Spring general meeting of the Bond, is intended to open up a debate within the Dutch cricketing community about a series of major issues currently facing the sport.

Aimed mainly at the managers of the KNCB’s constituent clubs, the Congress will nevertheless be open to all cricket enthusiasts. The programme will include the launch of the Bond’s new website, and of an online version of its Cricket Magazine.

The central theme of the day will be ‘Growth’. Discussion will be organised in five parallel groups, which will meet during the morning and report back in the afternoon, immediately before the formal general meeting.

Topics will be the financial position of the KNCB, based on the annual accounts; youth recruitment; a possible new structure for Dutch cricket based on an Australian model; the issue of multiculturalism; and alternative forms of competition.

With the Bond facing major financial challenges, the need to reverse an historical downward trend in playing numbers, the increasing encroachment of football and hockey on the already-short cricket season, occasional tensions between players from different cultural backgrounds, and the ever-greater demands of the international programme, there is no shortage of big issues for discussion.

The eighteen months since the new Board took up the reins have seen some significant successes, such as the introduction of the Twenty20 Cup and play-offs in the Hoofdklasse, but there has also been a good deal of criticism that the problems were not being confronted quickly or firmly enough.

This Congress will offer an opportunity for constructive and innovative thinking about all these issues, and it is to be hoped that the outcome will be a real momentum for the change which is undoubtedly needed.