September 23 Monday 2002
Dutch need more top-class cricket, says Lefebvre

COLOMBO: Netherlands captain Roland Lefebvre has appealed for more top-class cricket for his team, despite their poor showing in the Champions Trophy.

The Dutch part-timers proved a disappointment, losing by 206 runs in their opening match against Sri Lanka before going down by nine wickets to Pakistan on Saturday in their final pool four encounter.

But despite suffering two thumping losses, Lefebvre said the only way his side would improve was to continue to play against better teams. "It shows the big gap between the strong and minor countries but you don't solve it by not playing each other," he told reporters.

"It's a lack of experience in big games and it takes time to get that. There's not an international player who comes in and excels straight away and our last match was 6-1/2 years ago in the 1996 World Cup.

"There's even a big difference between the minor countries, between us and the likes of Kenya and Bangladesh. "They are fully professional and we are amateurs and the gap even between us and them shows we have to do a lot of work to even get close. "Our youngsters have come in and found the gap a very big one," he added. Their lack of regular, intense competition will not be solved before next year's World Cup as the Netherlands have only a warm-up tournament in Namibia involving the hosts, Canada and Kenya before their opening match, against India in Paarl on February 12.

But in the longer term Lefebvre said further integration into English county competitions would help his side improve. "We have been playing in the Cheltenham and Gloucester one-day competition in England for five or six years now," he said, "But we have to play a lot more big games.

"Scotland are playing in the English national league from next year, Namibia are playing in the South African competitions and that is the way forward for us." He added: "If we can compete more overseas, and for us that is in England, then you will see a rapid improvement."