History
Cricket was first seen being played on Dutch soil in the 1780s by an English traveller in Scheveningen, and by the turn of the 20th century, Dutch teams were touring England regularly. Cricket was one of the most popular sports in the Netherlands in the 19th century, surpassed since by many other sports, most notably association football. Cricket even found enough of a following to survive the German occupation of the country between May 1940 and May 1945. The sport, famously dismissed as "unmanly and un-German" and "insufficiently violent" by Adolf Hitler himself, endured thanks in no small part to the dogged enthusiasm of local players, who shrugged off the requisitioning of grounds and restrictions on weekend travel - not to mention the presence of thousands of heavily armed Nazis and the bombing of the main sports dealers in Rotterdam - to organise as many as 300 matches a year.
The KNCB has been an associate member of the International Cricket Council since 1966. There are a few cricket grounds in the Netherlands which are officially sanctioned by the ICC to host ODIs such as Amsterdam, Amstelveen and Voorburg. It hosted some of the matches of the 1999 Cricket World Cup, though the Dutch did not participate in that tournament.
The Dutch participated in the 1996 Cricket World Cup, 2003 Cricket World Cup, 2007 Cricket World Cup, and 2011 Cricket World Cup. In their debut campaign, they lost all of their matches barring a respectful performance against England. They qualified for the 2003 edition after winning the 2001 ICC Trophy, with their only win of the World Cup tournament coming against fellow qualifier Namibia. It was around this time that stars and excellent cricketers like Ronald Lefebvre and Ryan ten Doeschate started emerging to make Dutch cricket much more strong.
Read more about this topic: Koninklijke Nederlandse Cricket Bond
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