Among the plethora of questions that have been posed in the KNCB’s current consultation with the clubs, the closing date for which is today, there’s at least one striking absence: whether the time has not come to reintroduce a Reserve Hoofdklasse.

The experiment with a separate competition for the second elevens of the leading clubs, begun in 1995, was ended in 2000. The argument then was that aspiring first team players would gain more by being exposed to the best sides outside the top flight.

If that was ever true, and it was contested at the time, it can certainly be argued that it’s true no longer.

This year, three second teams from Hoofdklasse clubs (HCC, Quick Haag and Voorburg) took part in the Eerste Klasse.

In all, they managed to win ten of the 42 matches they played against the other seven clubs, finishing in the bottom three positions in the table. Quick Haag II and Voorburg II would, in normal circumstances, be relegated, with HCC II – who accounted for five of the wins against first teams – surviving.

It’s true that VOC Rotterdam II won promotion from the Overgangsklasse after a tight battle with Excelsior ’20 II, but they owed much of their success to the presence in the side of Tasmanian Chris Free, who made over 500 runs including two centuries and a 98.

For the rest, the second teams of VRA Amsterdam, Hermes-DVS Schiedam, HBS Den Haag and VVV Amsterdam all play, like those of promoted Eerste Klasse club ACC and runners-up Dosti Amsterdam, in the Overgangsklasse.

While HCC II and VOC II would, therefore, if the status quo were retained, play against the Best of the Rest next season, including the overseas coaches of Hercules, Kampong and Rood en Wit, most second elevens would be confronted with the much less exciting prospect of Overgangsklasse cricket.

You might say that’s because they’re not good enough to survive in the Eerste Klasse, and you’d be right. But that’s not the point.

If the overriding objective is the maximal development of Dutch talent, then it’s pretty clear that playing on poor pitches and sometimes inadequately maintained grounds, without KNCB umpires, against opponents whose interpretation of the Spirit of Cricket, to put it mildly, may differ radically from theirs, is not an ideal recipe.

Yes, they will, occasionally, come up against players of the quality of former Hermes-DVS coach Pankaj Joshi, a truly classy batsman who turned out for CCN Nieuwegein this season.

But that’s the exception rather than the rule, and for the development of the best young players as they try to prepare themselves to compete in the Hoofdklasse, or whatever the top flight may become, then it is surely arguable that they would be much better off playing week in, week out, on the top clubs’ grounds, against their peers, and with a solid admixture of older warhorses, seamers like Robin ter Plegt (Hermes) or Pieter Reeve (HCC), and batsmen like Charley Witteveen (Quick Haag) or Ernst Pieter Knupfer (ACC).

Clubs like HCC and Quick understand that the creation of a strong second eleven is crucial for long-term success. The issue is how such teams can, across the whole spectrum, best be tested and toughened.

And the answer is not, I suggest, in the Overgangsklasse.

Whatever the future form of the top domestic competition, let’s go back to a Reserve League restricted to second elevens, where the Hoofdklasse players of the future can really learn their craft, on the best grounds, against the most appropriate opponents.