Bas de Leede spoke to Phil Walker about the World Cup Qualifier, what it is like growing up playing cricket in the Netherlands, and their World Cup goals. This article first appeared in issue 71 of Wisden Cricket Monthly, a World Cup special.

Bas de Leede knew what was needed, and what was at stake. Chase down Scotland’s 277 inside 44 overs at Bulawayo, and his country would be at their fourth World Cup. He’d already shot out five Scottish batters with his seamers; now he proceeded to play one of the most gutsy ODI knocks of the century. His 123 from 92 balls marmalised the chase, booked the Netherlands a place at the big show, and made him just the fourth player in ODI history to take a five-for and hit a century in the same game.

After the party died down, the 23-year-old – son of former Netherlands skipper Tim de Leede – returned to the north-east of England to resume his first full season of county cricket. A month later, he made his maiden red-ball century for Durham. On the day that the club’s promotion bid was confirmed, WCM spoke to him about his spectacular personal summer and what his nation can achieve at the World Cup.

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“It’s massive for such a small cricketing country to play in a 10-team World Cup. When you think about it like that, that we’re one of just 10 teams to make it, it makes qualifying even more special.

“Against Scotland in the qualifier I didn’t really feel the pressure. I didn’t think about it too much. When you’re out there, you know how many runs you need and how many overs are left. For the first 20 or 30 balls, I knew I couldn’t score too slowly in case I messed it up for the rest of the batters, but once I was in, I was fine. All my focus went to, ‘We need six an over, we need seven an over, we need to find two boundaries to the short boundary this over’. It was great to be out there with Saqib Zulfiqar. He never looks too fazed. We were joking a bit and having a laugh which was great to take my mind off the pressure. I was pretty calm.

“It was an amazing feeling afterwards. It was such a nice way to complete our goal for that tournament. We sat in the changing room and I could literally look into everyone’s eyes around the room and know what we’d achieved together. It was so nice to celebrate that win together as a group and have a beer to toast our success.

“It’s not just about the guys on the field. Out at a tournament there’s 16 guys that need to make it happen, but what you can’t see is the guys in the Netherlands that didn’t get picked or the amount of support we got from ex-players.

“It’s a niche sport in the Netherlands. There is no getting away from that fact. We have only 6,500 people registered to play in the country. But when we qualified the media got much more interested in us. We have the potential to grow a lot, but we need money.

“Not just the Netherlands, but all the Associates should be getting more funding. If cricket really wants to be a world sport in the future and not just a sport played seriously by a handful of countries, we do have to find a way to give nations like the Netherlands more opportunity to employ people full time.

“When I first came into the national set-up, we got €50 for travel expenses and that was it. You lost money to play the game. It’s a little better now, but it’s still hard for young players. Now there’s six or seven part-time contracts. There’s contracts for the six months of summer and in the winter players go overseas to play in Australia or South Africa.

“Coming through the age groups, every year during the summer holidays we’d go over to England. We’d play against the minor counties which was a good test for us. In the Netherlands you’d have 11 or 12 guys who were decent and the rest were pretty average at youth cricket level. Testing ourselves against English guys was the highlight of the summer.

“I owe a lot to my dad. As a coach he spent maybe six winters in a row with me on the bowling machine. Two or three other guys would come and spend three to four hours a day, three or four days a week with us at the indoor nets. You have to train with a very small group of people because there’s not very many guys who want to make it in cricket in the Netherlands.

“There is a chance to grow the game, it’s just how to do it which is difficult. We don’t play sports in school. All sports are outside of school. Your parents have to enroll you into a football team or hockey club. Obviously, all the kids are going to play what their mates are playing. You get into cricket because your family already plays it. It’s not televised, it’s not big at all.

“If we put a couple of decent performances together at the World Cup, interest will get much bigger. Our goal is to make the semi-finals. Whether other people think that’s realistic or not, they can have their opinion. If we play our best cricket, we have a chance of beating teams and hopefully we will find ourselves in a position to qualify for the semis.”

This article first appeared in issue 71 of Wisden Cricket Monthly, a World Cup special.

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